I have no idea what self-subsistent being would be like. I also cannot see how anything in our investigations of nature could inform us about what self-existent being is like or that it gives us any reason to believe in self-existent being

That’s what the four proofs of God’s existence are setting after: reasons for believing in self-subsisting being and what it would be like (analogically).

You say we can know through natural theology that God is omnipotent, but you don't explain how natural theology enables us to know that

It’s in the link I shared in the OP. Did you read it?

Is natural theology different than revelation for you?

Yes. The field of study denoted as ‘natural theology’ is distinct from ‘revealed theology’: it is what we can know about God through reason applied to the natural world around us (devoid of divine revelation).

The difficulty here is that "salvation" is often understood as a Christian term, and in that context it is not something we can achieve on our own power.

Under this view, we cannot achieve repayment of our sins on our own; but God has to freely choose to save us by sacrificing Himself. Salvation here is referring to the restoration of the sinner into the proper order of creation.

I think the most fruitful things to pursue would be those things where you disagree with traditional Christians, in particular over whether some doctrine is accessible through natural reason (i.e. apart from revelation).

Sounds good. Here’s some differences and you can choose what you want us to discuss.

Stereotypical Christianity vs. “Bobism”

1. One must accept Christ in order to be saved; whereas one must sufficiently act in accord with God to be saved.

2. Justice is retributive; whereas justice is restorative.

3. The Great Sacrifice is freely chosen in a way where it could have been otherwise; The Great Sacrifice is a necessity of God’s freedom.

3. The Trinity, the good life, the path to salvation, etc. is revealed; all of those are naturally determinable.

4. Humans are the most loved by God; Persons of pure form are the most loved by God.

5. Unrepentant sinners go to eternal hell (viz., the lake of fire where there will be gnashing of teeth and great weeping); unrepentant sinners go to an indefinite hell that punishes them appropriately to get them to realize that their sins are bad until they repent.

6. The animal kingdom largely is ordered towards what is perfectly good (e.g., the lion eating the zebra is not bad); the animal kingdom is largely polluted with evil due to the Great Fall.

7. Humans caused the Great Fall; a person which existed prior to most if not all of evolution caused the Great Fall.

8. God can and has committed (retributively) just punishments without giving mercy; whereas God has to synthesize (Restorative) Justice and Mercy.

Etc.

 if we have a non-Deistic God who interacts with creation, then it is very intuitive to move into the idea that God has spoken and men have listened (i.e. faith)

Yes, but it isn’t necessary in order to understand everything that is vital to living a good life is my point. God does have to intervene in my view (such as to save us), but I am not sure exactly how often He would intervene. It seems to me that God doesn’t intervene much…

Anyway, I hope to have a closer look at your document in the near future.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

A quantum vacuum is not absolutely simple. A 'part' in this essay is being defined as 'something which contributes but is not identical to the whole'.

Is this a premise?

It is a part of my thesis.

Your OP seems focused on morality. Are you defining God as nothing more than the foundation of objective moral values? That may be all you need, and it lightens your burden of proof.

I think providing an accurate depiction of goodness and, by proxy, morality is vital to any metaphysical theory; however, I don’t think my OP is limited to that: it also provides a basis for ordinary things like change, contingency, composition, intelligibility, etc.

I noted mostly benefits that tie to our moral intuitions in the OP because I think those make the theory most advantageous.

I think that would pollute the forum with way to many posts.

My thought is that this is an attempt to justify Christianity upon rationality alone without reliance upon revelation, perhaps because you believe rationality is a firmer basis for belief than revelation or faith alone. Your views on the Trinity, incarnation and sacrifice, grace, mercy, and justice, and the distinctions between heaven, hell, and purgatory are clearly Christian. Suggesting that we could arrive at those ideas without introduction to and indoctrination to Christianity, but that we could arrive at that through reason alone will not ring true to anyone but a very devout Christian.

Exactly what I did is demonstrate that we can, and I in fact have, determined various aspects of God’s nature and His creation without appeal nor indoctrination into any major world religion because they all depend on Divine Revelation. Even if all the scriptures for all religions were found to be utterly false; my arguments would remain unimpeded.

You do move away from Christian orthodoxy in some places, like hell not being eternal, with the possibility of posthumous salvation, purgatory taking on a more traditional hell-like state

This is because I am not ad hoc rationalizing Christianity. I am not a Christian. I am going where reason applied to mundane things takes me (such as the nature of change, contingency, composition, etc.).

 you seem to redefine original sin, you describe a purely rational state when we go to heaven  (which seems consistent with your desire to prioritize rationality as an attribute)

Rationality is not distinct from faith: that would imply that to have faith is always irrational. I have faith that germs make me sick because doctor’s told me so and I trust the curriculum I had in school. I did not verify faithlessly that germs make me sick.

I do, however, to your point, prioritize faithless over faith-based understanding because faith requires trust in someone else to provide verification that one does not do themselves. So, of course, verifying something myself without the need for trust in anyone else is going to be more convincing for me than otherwise.

The reason that perfect knowledge is a part of our heavenly state is because reason is our highest faculty, because it (1) resembles God most and (2) it guides our actions, and its natural end is to know everything absolutely. That’s the whole point of intellect.

If I had to offer a single assessment, it would be that you're trying to sort out your very Christian beliefs and orientation in a way that comports with your philosophical leanings. It presents an account of your religious journey, which I think would be well received by a pastor with philosophical leanings and who isn't overly orthodox in his views, but less so to a conservative minded priest.

I genuinely am not trying to sort out Christian beliefs in the paper: I am just following the logic to where it takes me unbiasedly. If that takes me to conclusions a Christian might accept, then so be it.

I don't find it all persuasive in terms of convincing me that your views might arise without an a priori commitment to Christianity. The person who might find this interesting is a Christian who is troubled with some of the consequences of Christianity,

I understand where you are coming from; but I would challenge you to find fault with the writings themselves that I posted, because I didn’t depend on Christianity for my arguments. I began with natural theological arguments for God’s existence from change, contingency, composition, and essences.

f god is being itself, and there is no real separation (as opposed to conceptual distinction) between being and beings then there is no separation between god and nature.

God is subsistent being itself; which means that He exists before and independently of anything which depends on Him. Therefore, there is a separation between Being and beings; although beings would be dependent and thusly intimately related to Being itself.

This really gets into a much richer and far mysterious topic of what being is. The more I’ve thought about what being itself is, the more complicated it gets. I would ask you: what do you think self-subsistent being would be like? This is distinct from something which just happens to exist (viz., a contingent being like a chair).

Also since nature is not gendered, not a person at all, why refer to god as "He'.

Good question. It is metaphorical for God giving life to everything else, like a male gives life and a female makes life. There’s nothing particularly wrong with describing God as He, She, They, or just God: the only one that wouldn’t make any sense is ‘it’ because God is a person.

Doing this and the idea of an intervening god seem to place you more in the context of scriptural theology than natural theology

By ‘strong natural theism’, I was noting a position that is confined to the knowledge have of God naturalistically that is ‘strong’ because it takes the position that we can sufficiently know God this way; however, it is not incompatible with revealed theism either. It is not a dilemma.

We can know, through natural theology, that God could intervene if He wanted to because He is omnipotent and unaffected by anything external to Him; however, I do believe He also has to choose what is best, so if what is best is to not intervene at all then in effect He cannot intervene.

Whether or not the idea of separation of church and state was primarily motivated by deism is a completely separate topic. However, it is clear that not all the founding fathers were deists or atheists; and they did not establish a separation of church and state. The first amendment refers to congress, which is federal---not state--and state's had sanctioned churches for a long time afterwards. It is an interesting topic, though: Thomas Jefferson seemed adamantly in favor of a full separation like the one you noted.

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.