I see. Can you respond, then, to the three examples I gave and explain how they are allegories and what they are allegories about? I find this implausible for, e.g., Exodus where they are outlining rules. Rules are not usually meant metaphorically or allegorically.

Neoplatonism is a type of monism, so everything is God

I don’t think it is a form of monism. Aristotle definitely wasn’t a pantheist nor was Aquinas.

It is precisely the religion that is to be wiped out (although there was no distinction between the culture and the religion, because they were the same thing).
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Among other things, what this means is that if all of the Amalekites abandoned their Amalekite religion, they would no longer be Amalekites, and they would not have to be killed

I was not aware of that, and that’s fine as long as we agree then that:

1. Not all people who lived in the culture of the Amalekites were Amalekites, since an Amalekite is a religious affiliation and those who lack the capacity or choose not to engage in it were not be properly affiliated. To iron man this, I would be thinking of children and disabled people that were “Amalekites” but not because they have properly been affiliated with the cultic rites but because they simply live among them.

2. As far as my understanding goes of the passage I quoted in the OP, God commanded them to wipe out the entire city or cities that the Amalekites lived; so this would seem to include the children, disabled people, people who couldn’t leave but completely disagreed with the practices, and animals.

For now, I am leaving out the objection about animals, though, and we can focus on the children if you would like. I find it implausible that no one in an entire city had a cognitive disability (perhaps they always sacrificed those people?), a person that disagrees with the cult but lacks the means to escape, or were a child.

Are we still on the same page? (I realize I still haven't gotten to children yet. :razz:)

I think so! My only concern is that we are interpreting the texts as only fighting with those adults engaging in the cult but I don’t find that plausible in the text so far.

EDIT:

My worry is that, analogously, we are noting that it is a just war to invade the Nazis but also conceding that the invasion was done in a manner intending to kill all the women, children, disabled, and animals to wipe out the german ethnic group out. It seems like a just war has certain rules of engagement.

The evidence we seek to evaluate in determining how an all-good God commanded the killing of children, will only be found in spirit

With all due respect, this seems like a non-answer that sidesteps the discussion. Is your rebuttle to the OP that we cannot know why God did evil, but that it is justified because you are biased towards God?

“therefore God has done evil in the OT” we are biased against the premise “God is all good and would never do evil.”

No. The OP demonstrates in a non-biased way that God cannot do what the OT purports God did. A bias is a prejudice that is irrational and not based in reason, evidence, and logic: I am not doing that in the OP.

 I know that God is all-good. I am biased in favor of God.

Is there any evidence of what is being purported as God’s doing that is evil that would tip the scales for you and make you question if the purported history of God was really history of God?

So when I see horrible acts in the OT leading me to conclude “God is doing evil” I immediately think something is wrong with my reasoning and my conclusions and my understanding of the OT, because God can never sin.

This is what the OP is getting you to question:

1. Genocide is evil.
2. The OT purports God did genocide.
3. Therefore, either the OT was wrong or genocide is not evil.

Your response seems invalid. You are saying: “God can’t do evil and I am biased towards that, so I am going to believe that whatever God does is good”.

However, this isn’t a response to the argument (summarized above). You either think Genocide is always evil and the OT purports that God did it or you don’t. If you do, then you have to bite the bullet and accept that either OT was wrong or genocide is not always evil.

Likewise, you could object to the 2 and give a historical account of what the passages really meant and how it didn’t portray genocide; but saying “God always does good” doesn’t help further the conversation: I agree God cannot do wrong, and that’s why I don’t think the OT is factually accurate.

This idea occurred to me as a part of an argument that God cannot be a utilitarian:
Consider something with a small quantity of intrinsic goodness, maybe for the utilitarian the pleasure of smelling a rose, or for those of us with a more metaphysical idea of goodness, a hydrogen atom or a sugar molecule. Whatever it is, call it a "unit" of goodness. If one of these is good, two of them would be better, although not necessarily twice as good. And three would be better than two. This seems to go on without limit: for any N, N+1 units of goodness are better than N units. So there is no maximum amount of goodness that God could create, just as there is no largest integer. But utilitarianism requires us to cause the maximum amount of good possible. Therefore God cannot be a utilitarian.

I commend your cleverness and ingenuity here; but I think this is fallacious. Goodness is not quanitified over like an atom: it isn’t a concrete being but, rather, a property that concrete beings can have.

Think of it this way. Imagine we asked ourselves: what does it mean to be most perfectly circular? Your argument here is essentially in response: imagine we thought of circularity like it can be split into one basic unit-atom and that utilitarianism is true, then we would never be able to create something that is perfectly circular..

But circularity is a property and cannot be thought of as a unit like this. A perfectly circular thing is entirely metaphysically possible in isolation; and God, analogously, is a perfectly good thing.

 Now when you talk about a "best ordering to creation" or a best "ordering of things", are you talking about one thing or many things?

I am talking about more than one real being and how they would be ordered. One can order them relative to any principle; but I am looking at the principle of ordering them relative to what is perfectly good—which is God Himself.

I will provide some quotes when I have time.

I never denied the existence of good and evil: I noted that goodness is real and evil is not real. Evil is the privation of what is good: so it exists, but is not a member of reality. It is a lacking of goodness; just like how darkness is not real but light is.

So if a child is on fire and I have a fire extinguisher, it's ok for me to withhold help? Just stand there and let her scream? That seems moral to you?

What we are talking about is akin to whether it is morally permissible to create a world where it is possible for a child to get lit on fire or not; and I would say that it is.

To answer your question, which is completely separate and disanalogous, I think one has a legal right to withhold help all else being equal because no citizen qua citizen has the duty to rescue another. Morally speaking, I think it would be immoral not use the fire extinguisher all else being equal because it is trivial for you to do and their live is in danger. If you were to strengthen the risk on your end, though, I would say you are permitted to withhold help (e.g., if you would have to rescue them from a burning building).

Likewise, I was not saying that allowing evil is always permissible. I was saying that they are morally evaluated differently.

I agree with that assessment so far. It's the killing of innocents that my OP is objecting to: I recognize that the Canaanites were doing horrible things and a war against them is justified. However, that doesn't justify purposely attempting to genocide the people in their entirety.

perhaps Plato would perceive God/the divine as unchangeable? 

As far as I know, for Plato God is the One which is unchangeable as a Platonic Form.

 As @Count Timothy von Icarus mentioned, God can be bargained with.

CC: @Count Timothy von Icarus

God cannot and is not bargained with in the sense you mean—not even if what Timothy was mentioning. God already knows what someone who ‘persuaded’ Him is going to say: that entails it was a part of His plan to say one thing initially and change His mind later.

Do you disagree then that there is no theological answer for Auschwitz?

I am absolutely disagreeing. The quote you gave serves only as a poetic line (even if Elie meant it as more). It's an emotion response, and rightly so, to a horror.

God allowing human evil is necessary in order for us to have free will; and we need that to choose Him. This does allow, then, for humans to commit atrocities against each other.

Do you think it is better to love God because He makes you; or love God because you love God?

Origen seems to be arguing that given Christ as love and mercy that the Old Testament has to be primarily spiritual lessons and not conveying historical events. However, most of the events we have some reliable historical evidence that they at least happened to some extent.

Also, didn't the Apostles also take the OT to be giving historical facts alongside spiritual facts? It seems like a hard pill to swallow to reject the literality of the OT outright.

Also, how does this address the three examples I gave? Are you saying you would hold that the great flood did not happen but was an analogy for something else?

But how would you respond to the three examples I gave in the OP?

Anyhow, if you treat God as a person, or as something like a very powerful, magical alien, then even the Binding of Isaac will seem very troubling indeed.

The OP doesn't treat God as a 'magical alien': it treats God as God in the classical theistic sense---the neo-platonic sense.

Jesus explicitly reveals himself as related to the god of the OT as his son: that's the chasm in your argument. Jesus made it clear he is fulfilling the OT.

Okay. Can you remind me of the view that he takes? 

He explained that there are three main categories of responses:

1. That the text should be read at face value (i.e., literally in the strictest sense) and that there is nothing wrong with it (as God cannot do unjust things and He did those things so they must not be wrong). The example he gave was William Lane Craig and Divine Command Theory.

2. That the text should be read spiritually (symbolically) and ignore the literal sense.

3. That the text should be read in a literal sense but as it relates to the whole Bible.

His take was a modified version of 2: he emphasized that he does not think we should ignore literal sense of the text but that the literal sense when understood contextually is a spiritual lesson (in the case).

He noted that the text is using hyperbole, that the author was not writing to the generation who fought in the war, and that the war was a just war over the evils the Canaanites were doing (like child sacrifice): this author existed way later. He argued that it mostly likely was a spiritual lesson meant to teach the later generation to avoid evil at all costs (similar to how Jesus says to cut off your arm if it causes you to sin hyperbolically).

Like I noted before, it seems somewhat plausible but still has issues.

The idea that there is universal agreeement among the billions of Christians as to what the text means is obvioulsy not true.

I never suggested that, but historical there is a predominant interpretation that even fundamentalists agree with. The vast majority of Christians agree that the texts should be read literally; the dispute is what did the author mean literally. Taking something literally does not mean that you take it at face value.

This sentence makes a different point, which I had not considered. You are trying to make a correspondence argument, asking if God is accurately portrayed in the Bible. I had not considered that. I was considering the Bible as a work that had certain usages, none of which are consistent with the way the Bible is literally written, as in, no one dashes the heads of babies on rocks.

:up:

Evil is a privation of good.

Okay, good. I was trying to revisit some of Fr. Stephen De Young's work, and I noticed that he did an interview yesterday. He begins talking about the Amalekites at 57:12. I plan to listen to that section when I have time (57:00-1:15:00), but just given the first few minutes it seems like it will bear heavily upon this thread.

Thank you: I will take a look!

Well God's nature conflicts with a flood in Texas killing a bunch of teenage girls. God supposedly has the power to stop it, but he just stands around picking his nose.

Firstly, even if that contradicts God’s nature, it is not a logical contradiction. Secondly, it does not incohere with God’s nature to allow evil to happen, like I noted before, because it is necessary for higher goods.

You are presupposing that what is supremely good is to create a world where privations cannot happen (i.e., evil), and this is not only metaphysically impossible but negates the possibility of the virtues, free will, natural laws, etc.

There is a difference between doing evil and allowing evil.

It wouldn't be a misunderstanding. It would a rejection. Absolute rejection and condemnation of the Catholic Church has been a thing for about 500 years. It's fine. Nobody cares anymore.

To think that God can will badness is metaphysically impossible under classical theism, and for good reasons. God is purely actual and a creator; so He must be fully realized as a creator; and this entails that God must create things in a way that perfectly orders them (otherwise He has the potential to be a better creator and thusly implying He is not fully realized as a creator). A part of perfect ordering is willing the good, relative to its part in creation, of that thing in creating it (and willing its existence); which entails that God cannot will the bad, a privation of the good, of a thing relative to its nature within the hierarchy of things.

It seems to me that for every level of perfect ordering of the creation, there might be a more perfect possible ordering, so that ordering the creation perfectly (i.e., most perfectly) would be impossible.

Can you elaborate on this?

I would say that there has to be a best ordering to creation because the thing that has a property the best is the one that has it 100% (even if there could be multiple beings with it 100%); goodness then is said to be the most of something when it is 100% good; the ordering of things that is best is relative to how well they and their relations resemble what is 100% good; and what is 100% good is univocal (viz., there can’t be two different ways to be 100% good just like there are not two different ways to be 100% soft, clear, circular, etc.).

I think you would be implying (by saying there are possibly two ‘most best’ orders of things relative to any given quality) that there is a way to be 100% of some property and not be 100% of some property (because there is a different way to be 100% of that very property).

I would be interested to hear @Leontiskos response to this. I am inclined to agree; but I think Christians would say that the Old Covenant paved the way for the New Covenant. Jesus is God revealing Himself as love and mercy; and the OT is revealing how sinful and damned we are.

It is not at all: Christians hold they are harmoniously intertwined. The new covenant and the old covanent relate to each other in manner of succession. I agree though: the OT seems incompatible to me with the NT.

:up:

I definitely am not trying to argue in bad faith and am genuinely interested to hear what Christians have to say on this. I listened to Jimmy's video, and it was good: I could see that as a semi-viable solution to the conquest of Canaan. However, the fact that, taking my verse as an example, the author specifically noted that God commanded them to wipe everyone out seems to incohere with the idea that the author is not meaning that literally; and the fact that it was hyperbole does not plausibly resolve the issue since there's usually a bit of truth to hyperbole: viz., when the author says they killed all the children as hyperbole it suggests they did kill at least some children.

However, to push back here, there are many examples of verses that I could use that are immune to this kind of rejoinder. E.g., the rules about slavery, mistreatment of women, etc. A divinely inspired outlining of rules for Israelites to follow isn't plausibly meant to convey anything other than those rules for Israelites to follow.

The idea of an omni-benevolent, omni-potent god is logically inconsistent

How is it logically inconsistent? What logical contradiction arises from the two? I believe that.

1. Reinflate one of the solutions to the problem of evil.

This OP isn’t an argument for a problem of evil in the sense that phrase usually refers. I am arguing that God’s nature contradicts the actions attributed to God in the OT; and so that can’t be God doing it.

2. Stop believing that God is moral, but rather the fountain of universal creativity from which both good and evil take shape.

This completely misunderstands classical theism. The catholic church, the OG church, holds classical theism to be true.

This is not self-apparent at all! Christians tend to disagree with you here.

You can certainly say the text says X and X is immoral, but it's a different matter to say that the text says X and therefore those who rely upon the text are immoral unless those who so rely apply the text as you've interpreted it.

It is an external critique of the OT from the perspective of my view as a nuanced, classical theist. I am not commenting on whether or not Christians themselves live moral lives or not: I am pointing out that the OT seems to suggest that God is doing unjust acts.

 A literalist interpretation is used to show the horrors and uselessness of the text, and then it is pointed out that not everyone accepts these literal interpretations and not everyone who relies on the Bible relies solely on the Bible for all direction

I think the vast majority of Christians believe that one should interpret the text relative to what the author meant to convey; but what they meant to convey can be tricky. It’s not a debate in Christiology about whether we should abandon interpreting the texts literally.

(1) the Bible says what it literally says, and (2) the various religious interpret their texts and practice their religions as they do. You may believe there is no way to make those two compatible. Others disagree. Regardless though, exceedingly few religions do (2) as (1) says.

I partially agree insofar as I do think ethics evolves over time as we learn; but I do think most Christians would hold that we are not going against the Bible or abandoning it in that process: we are refining our understanding of the original meaning meant to be conveyed in the texts.

Those who practice according to the Old Testamant, those who practice according to the New Testament, and those who rely upon no text at all for some reason pretty much lives their lives the same morally. That is something worth considering.

If this is true, it has no bearing on whether or not the OT portrays God in a manner that contradicts His nature; and, by extension, whether or not one would be justified in rejecting the Christian faith on those grounds.

I understand your point though: people tend to behave relative to the norms of their day. That is true of everyone.

What you have described is one of the primary arguments used by anti-religionists against Christianity. How can you worship a God who does such terrible things?

Yes, but the stereotypical arguments you are describing are low quality. If it is an internal critique, then a Christian could bite the bullet and say it isn’t unjust for God to do those things; and if it is an external critique from moral anti-realism, then who cares?

 I will note the difference between your seven moral imperatives and the 10 commandments. The Old Testament God seems to have had a different understanding of morality than you do.

I agree!

God has revealed that He is all-good, all-just and never evil. I’m saying how that is the case, I don’t think we can just do some math, use our reason, and figure it out.
…
We cannot know the reasoning and will of God except only when he tells us

I appreciate the clarification! I think that the fundamental disagreement between us lies in our approaches. You seem to be basing most, if not all, of your epistemic chips in God as Divinely Revealed and deducing from that how God is; whereas, I base most, if not all, of my epistemic chips in natural theology and deduce how God is from that.

This is a good example, as you think God is all-good and all-just only because God has revealed this to us; whereas I think we know God is all-good and all-just because we can reason about His nature from His effects.

Of course, if you believe that God exists solely because of the historical accounts in that the verses in the OP should be read in a manner where God did do those things, then I understand how you would arrive at the conclusion that God can do the same thing that we have done and it wouldn’t be immoral. The problem lies in the fact that we can know, through natural theology, that God cannot do those things because they violate His very nature.

If a man kills another person can you tell if he is an evil murderer without knowing his heart, his reasoning and his intention?

I think you are conflating absolute certainty with sufficient evidence.

This is why Jesus tells us not to judge our brothers and to leave justice to God.

I don’t believe Jesus teaches that we should never judge each other; and based off of your example, then, wouldn’t you need to hold that Jesus is teaching that you shouldn’t convict murderers on earth but rather leave it to God?

Are there any deaths of anyone that are not God’s plan? God sent Adam and Eve out to die and all of their offspring, all of us unable since the moment of conception to return to eternal life. Why pick certain stories from the OT to chastise God’s actions? None of us are Adam or Eve, but we have all been punished for original sin? Aren’t we innocent of the crimes that led us to know death?

I am not making a problem of evil argument, in the sense that that phrase refers to, because I am noting that God cannot contradict His own nature; and it contradicts His nature to commit murder.

The problem of evil, IMHO, as typically understood, isn’t that problematic to me. God allows evil for the sake of higher goods; but, crucially, He does not partake in evil. So if the OP is right, then God cannot do such acts because it would be evil for Him to do so.

God is not the direct agent of injustice, because there are no innocents as each of us relates to God (except where God makes us innocent)

Yes, but I would also argue that people with ‘original sin’ seem to be ‘innocent’ in the stereotypical sense we are discussing. This gets at another example to the point of the OP: is it morally permissible for God to do generational punishing for sins those generations did not commit but not permissible for North Korea to do?

I think you would say that God has a sovereign standing to do it and this is the differentiating factor; but, then, you are committed to saying generational punishment, like North Korea’s, is not always morally impermissible or unjust. That’s a bullet I am not readily receptive to biting (:

 The best way to find these answers is to love God, to read of his mercy and goodness and know that the all-powerful creator loves you, Bob, in particular, so much so that he would die for you, and did so on a cross - that is the person we are here asking to explain His deeds. And he will explain them to you because he loves you.

I have deep sympathy for Christ; but the Bible has to make sense to me to accept him as the Son of God because Christ clearly relates Himself to the Old Testament God as if He is the Word of that God in flesh. So if the OT God is doing things that God cannot do because it would contradict His nature and Jesus is relating himself to that God, then Jesus cannot be the Son of God.

But I don’t think our human calculations will adequately sort out the flood, the killing of the first born in Egypt, etc, etc.

It just all seems blatantly wrong, by objective standards, and to dismiss it as a question we can ask God later seems problematic to me: it questions the integrity of the Bible itself, so I would argue we need to hash it out. I think most Christians throughout history would agree since there seem to be a great body of literature on it.

One of my favorite passages is John 15:15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”

What do you think about Divine Hiddenness? Why did Jesus, if he is the Son of God, always speak cryptically, omit revealing most of ethics, came in an ancient time knowing we have technology that would greatly help solidify/safeguard the evidence of his existence as God, and avoid revealing himself to everyone?

I know that’s a separate topic, but Divine Hiddenness is another interesting topic.

Yeah, I see what you mean: I think that is the point of Job. However, I don't think we need to be able to give an account of what the perfectly good way to treat things is in order to know that certain treatment cannot be the perfectly good way to treat them. If we accept natural law theory, then we can look at the way God ordered things and know that murder is wrong and I don't see how God is exempt from that. Do you believe that which is the creator can do whatever they please with that which they created?

Sounds good and I will listen to that video.

Yes, your summary of my argument is correct. I am curious what your thoughts are on it.

Hello, friend!

I've heard this rejoinder before, but the issue I take with it is that it absolves God of any moral responsibility. God is a person and persons are moral agents.

Moreover, God is perfectly good with perfect knowledge of His own perfect goodness; so He not only cannot sin but He always chooses not to....but this presupposes that He is capable of moral accountability!

If we take your argument with fervent seriousness, then I would say that the principle here is that "that which is the creator can do anything it wants to that which was created".

On the contrary, if God is perfectly good, then it would either have to be good for Him to have committed these alleged atrocities being no atrocity at all or it was not God (or did not happen).

What do you think?

. Aren't you a Christian?

Ah, so you are a functionalist, then?

Functions point to ends; ends point to a form; and a form points to an essence.

A "mind" as a mere function is an abstraction of any being which has those kinds of faculties; but it does not suffice for accounting for what a mind is for such-and-such. E.g., my mind as a human a human mind, instead of an alien mind, because it inheres in my human substance.

The function of a leg may be the same for a human and an ostrich, but they have different kinds of legs in virtue of their nature. It seems like if we define a leg in terms of its function, then human's and ostriches both have legs in the same manner.

:up:

Ok, I think I am understanding it better now. My mistake was that I was thinking a substantial form is merely the self-actualizing principle of a being; but it is really the self actualizing principle of a substance. Iron has a substantial form: it's parts are essentially ordered towards the whole whereby if you destroy that ordering so goes the iron itself; whereas a chair has an unsubstantial form: it's parts are unessentially ordered towards the whole whereby if you destroy the ordering the parts remain the same kind of thing it was to begin with (e.g., the metal constituting the chair does not cease to be metal if the chair is taken apart).

A soul, then, is not identical to a substantial form; instead, it is a kind of substantial form that has a self-actualizing principle. This would entail, then, that a robot could never have a soul, even if it were self-actualizing, because it is not a substantial form: the parts are not essentially ordered to the whole.

Likewise, the unity in a robot, even if it were self-actualizing, would be accidental and not an essential one; so it would not be alive proper.

Assuming I am more on-point in this assessment than before, going back to how a soul begets another soul, the parents would have to somehow actualize the matter so that it can receive the soul; but the soul would have to somehow be educed from that process. I guess this chalks up to the basic and mysterious question of how a life-organism can be created; which is not a unique problem for Aristotle.

For the problem of interaction, I would say that Aquinas doesn't have the hard problem (since the soul and body are one substance); however, it does have the soft problem of how something immaterial can interact with something material. I'm not sure if he ever addresses that problem or not.

However, for Aquinas, since the rational soul is immaterial and subsistent and thusly has to be infused by God instead of being educed from a natural process, there is a further soft problem of how organisms which clearly did not have a rational soul could have evolved to have a rational soul (such as is the case with our transitionary species'). What do you think about that?

Is the elastic algorithm hardcoded or not? Given that it is, the robot is hardcoded to move in certain ways. It's just that the "ways" are a bit more subtle than someone doing a robot dance. — Leontiskos

The algorithm is hardcoded, but it only dictates the structure for the being to will towards its ends. We aren't talking about a being that has a proper intellect (as that would require an immaterial soul): we are talking about a robot akin to a mechanical zebra.

It has no intrinsic ends. It has no will. It is just blindly following the hardcoded algorithm. There is no extra-algorithmic aspect to its principles of motion — Leontiskos

Notwithstanding persons, organisms blindly follow how its soul is programmed to will towards in the sense you described: the soul moves towards the ends it is supposed to have relative to its nature. There's nothing absolutely free about it: wouldn't you agree?

In the case of improper intellects (like a zebra's) that just pattern matches, it is just the processing of sense-data without abstraction of the form; and so it does also abide by whatever natural algorithm is in place for it to think. This doesn't mean the zebra cannot will against its nature whatsoever: it might will against avoiding an injury to preserve itself from a predator.

I agree with you, but I do see the form of an alive being as analogous to how a form is baked into the chair. I think the robot example is going to further the discussion best, so let's dive in.

If I write a computer program that starts with an integer and adds 1 every second, is it self-unified towards the end of larger sums? The crucial point here is that the program or the robot is not self-moving, given that it is a human artifact which is being moved by the instructions given to it by a human. — Leontiskos

Imagine you made a robot that was not hardcoded to move in certain ways, but was comprised of an elastic algorithm that facilitated its ability to will in accord with its ends (e.g., survival, reproduction, regeneration, etc.). Would you not consider that analogous to an non-subsistent, substantial form (viz., a material soul like a zebra's)? If so, then why not?

This isn't like a hardcoded machine program. It is programmed to be self-unified towards its ends and to will towards it.

I was thinking the material soul is baked into the matter like the form of a chair is baked into a chair; but it sounds like in your view that is not true. The material soul is not merely baked into the matter as a way materials are arranged to self-actualize: instead, there's a quasi-subsistent unity that directs its self-actualization.

I would say that a robot has no inward self-actualizing principle towards specific ends. It has no substantial form because it is not a substance. It is a mere aggregate of parts and instructions. — Leontiskos

But wouldn't a robot that could mechanistically grow, heal, etc. be self-unified towards certain ends?

Let's call the act of procreating "begetting." I don't know precisely how an oak tree begets an acorn. Does it bear on your point about whether the soul is a unity? — Leontiskos

What I wondering is how would a material soul ever be begotton by another material soul if the soul is a unity which is not merely received by the matter in the same way a chair's matter receives unity from the form bestowed onto it by its creator.

I was envisioning that all Aristotle meant by a material soul (viz., non-subsisting soul), like a vegetative soul, is that it is analogous to how a chair receives its form but that it is a form when received that self-actualizes.

To clarify, are you saying that a robot that has an inward self-actualizing principle towards specific ends (which provide its whatness) does not thereby have a soul?

Do you believe, then, that the soul, even in material souls (viz., non-subsistent souls), is a unity that directs the organism (and this unity is not merely how the parts behave in unison together)? If so, then how does, e.g., an oak tree produce another oak tree with an oak tree soul? I was thinking it would just provide it with the intial spark to get it's parts self-actualizing towards the natural ends of an oak tree.