What kind of line would separate being in the middle with being anywhere else (like a start)? There is an absolute difference between middle and start.

Starts make a line.
Middles need no lines or distinctions.

must start instead from where we are.

Hence the relevance of Ramsey, who shows us a way to start from indifference. — Banno

Where we are, is already in the middle - neither starting nor at an end. But instead, already using language and reasoning and willing and wondering…

We can stay here.

Or we can do philosophy - which, inevitably remains already in the middle, but ALSO adds a new “start”. We construct it. And to do so, introduce the fixed “start”. We identify an absolute and stand on it or aim for it.

we find ourselves already doing philosophy — Banno

How is that universe you’ve just thrown me into any clearer a picture than what I am trying to acknowledge and talk about.

If you want to further clarify “finding ourselves already doing philosophy”, in my experience, at least one of not many absolutes will appear (also vaguely, but not with me in the middle but with me conceptually so I can call something a “start”).

There is no way to be perfectly clear about “that which lies outside of analysis”.

But if there was nothing to it, we would never build any agreement whatsoever. And we build agreement all of the time.

I can't really "disagree" with something that is so unclear. — Banno

First, I bet you could.
But more to the point, I bet you can agree to something unclear. I think agreeing on the unclear is part of your point about indifference. Careful, rigorous, moves, but ultimately in the middle with unknown beginnings and ends.

Did it just click? — Banno

Well, no. I’m still trying to figure out why you disagree with me.

To "lie beyond analysis" in this sense doesn't relieve us of the responsibility of making sense. — J

Yes. I’d rather call the two anspects 1) analysis of analyzing (logic, language), and 2) analysis of the world (what language is about, why we speak, agreement itself).

So nothing need be outside of analysis.

whether we find ourselves already doing philosophy, and must start instead from where we are. — Banno

I started a post titled “Being in the Middle”.

Why do you think what we are doing should be called “philosophy”. Are the ends so remote here in the middle that we may as well call this “making cookies”?

No. We call it “philosophy” whatever philosophy absolutely turns out to be, whether we ever get there, however it may ever be known, but still, we don’t call it “automotive engineering”. We call it philosophy.

How is that?

There is something absolute involved, though I haven’t and maybe can’t define it.

But if we don’t aim for it, your next reply might be anything at all and neither could know of it was or wasn’t doing more philosophy.

I'm suggesting that it's more accurate to talk about a type of philosophy -- Nagel's, perhaps -- which avails itself when necessary of all the rigorous, analytic tools, but is aiming to discuss topics that lie beyond analysis as such. — J

I love it. That’s philosophy to me. Analysis, but not just analysis of analysis, but also analysis of living in the world or “topics that lie beyond analysis as such”. I’m good with that.

None — Banno

Maybe none?

So… that’s it then.

What a mess.

Ok, what you assert is true.

Then there's not much point in continuing this conversation, is there. — Banno

I could be wrong.

What a mess? You seem to have more to say…

I think the Williamson essay is itself a good example, though I suppose some would dispute its rigor.

Or for a broader example, Thomas Nagel's work is my ideal of how philosophy can be remain rigorous and also ask questions that go beyond clarifying what is consistent or coherent within a given model. There are certainly others. — J

I agree with that. Williamson himself didn’t think his essay got any significant philosophic work done and lacked rigor, but I agree - it’s a work for philosophers exclusively and gets some work done.

Nagel keeps the questions alive.

One thing to notice: The requirement to "completely forego the devotion to . . . " is surely too rigid, and also tendentious. By putting it in terms of "devotion," you're already building a rhetorical case against it, aren't you? Couldn't we just talk about "a type of philosophy that doesn't primarily concern itself with . . ." ? — J

You said “though it need not” and so I asked if you were saying “completely forego” since it need not.

You changed “relegated” to “devoted”.

I am not building the case as much as confirming your case.

You ask, “Couldn't we just talk about "a type of philosophy that doesn't primarily concern itself with . . ." ?”

Well yes, but two points in the context of this thread. Isn’t this thread about more precision, so “doesn’t primarily concern” doesn’t seem rigorous and begs further details about what is the primary concern and how secondary or tertiary is the less concerning.
Also, I think this contradicts you saying “though it need not.” (Which is why you sensed a case against it.)

Bottom line to me, philosophy must concern itself with consistency and coherence of language and argument - that is logical validity. But philosophy must also concern itself with the world and the persons in it and their existential/metaphysical questions - that is where soundness of arguments is measured.

If you seek validity with no concern for soundness, you live in a hypothetical world at best, and further, like math, we all must think the exact same thing about what is valid. If you seek soundness but no concern for validity, no one will ever be able to follow your reasoning and logic and understand you, and we all may think totally different things. But if you can communicate both validity AND soundness, well maybe there is something truly interesting to talk about.

This isn’t an argument. It’s just why I bother to seek something valuable by talking with other people.

The sound experience conveyed validly.

I'll help. I think your intuition is along these lines:

1. Making any comparison requires a standard.
2. That standard must be fixed
3. That fixed standard must be independent on the things being compared
4. to be both fixed and independent is to be absolute
5. hence any comparison requires an absolute standard

Something like that?

Can you see why this is incorrect? — Banno

That is the intuition. I think I see that it is not valid. Something about 2 and 4 seems tautological so nothing new can be concluded.

But…

Mere assertion. — Banno

How is ANY use of “better” anything more than mere assertion?

I AM merely making an assertion.

I’m basically asserting that language doesn’t work unless it refers to absolutes.

To call something misleading is to say it leads somewhere—but crucially, somewhere we didn’t intend, or that doesn’t fulfill the function we took ourselves to be engaging in. That’s not the same as saying there is a metaphysical end-point we ought to be led to; rather, it’s to say that a particular use diverts us from how the practice normally works or what it aims at internally. — Banno

That looks full of absolutes to me.
Absolute “misleading”.
Absolute “function we took ourselves to be engaging in.”
An absolute “normally”
Etc.

These are your assertions. I’m okay with assertions, depending on what follows from them. I think what follows from the assertion “we don’t need absolutes” is “we cannot communicate”.

I think the way you intuitively talk demonstrates my intuition about the reliance on absolutes essential to meaningful, useful language in the world of rational speakers.

The argument I could use help with is that two rational agents cannot communicate absent a medium separate from the both that lies between them and is fixed with absolutes; language is that medium, full of references to items named, relations rationalized, and absolute concepts binding these to the two rational agents at once.

Something must be fixed in this mix, or nothing like a communication would ever occur. And it already has occurred. I agree, it’s not much of an argument, but I think it is more than an adequate demonstration. We both need help with our assertions.

Better entails worst and best, in itself, by definition, in every appropriate use. We need that to be the case, to use “better” at all.
— Fire Ologist
I'm interested in the limitation. Can you give me an example of an inappropriate use? Do you mean that in the inappropriate uses, better does not entail worst and best? — Ludwig V

Everyone seems to be comfortable using the word “better” and understanding what it is intended to add to a conversation. I am saying, by saying and using “better” appropriately, one not only must understand what better means and how to use “better”, one must also know what “best” means and how to use it as well. Better is defined by best. The better tends towards the best, while the worse tends towards the worst. You don’t know one of these, you don’t use one of these appropriately, without knowing the others.

So now I ask you, may the good philosophy devote itself to identifying and clarifying consistent/inconsistent and coherent/incoherent relations internal to systems/models?
— Fire Ologist

Yes. Though it needn't. — J

So good philosophy can completely forego the devotion to “ identifying and clarifying consistent/inconsistent and coherent/incoherent relations internal to systems/models”?

Or is there more to it that can still be rigorous and can be the work of philosophers?
— Fire Ologist

Yes. — J

Can you give an example?

The simple point is that we can deal with our present situation without positing some absolute. — Banno

Ok. Did you argue that somewhere without positing some absolute?

The goal should be equality for humans. — MoK

I agree ‘equality before the law’ is a good political ideal. That’s one whole conversation, about politics and the formation of the relationship between citizens and the state and the law.

I agree equal opportunity would be nice, but practically will never happen. That’s economics and maybe sociology. Totally different discussion and use of “equality”. We will never be able to create a world where all people have all opportunities equally because of the nature of people and the nature of the world, and the nature of people in the world.

I disagree people are by nature equal to each other. Quite the opposite, I believe all of us are each unique, and unequal. This is biology, psychology and theology.

So depending on what you mean by “equality for humans”, and unless you are only talking politics, I likely disagree with you.

Two alignments get involved when it comes to morality, namely, good and evil — MoK

I don’t know what that means.

Luckily for me you're responding to my posts. Which is proof in itself. — AmadeusD

I’ve outright ignored countless people, even you. Did they provoke me not to respond, then?
— NOS4A2 — Michael

Yes they did.

Directly in response to Amadeus’ post, in an effort to persuade us all with his words (ironically and contradictorily to his position), NOS has not responded to Amadeus.

It was a nice try. But the impact of Amadeus’ words is too apparent by NOS’ inaction.

Banno, J,
I know you have moved to some interesting discussion here, but the issues below still seem live to me, and related to where you are now.

And related to post on the Bernard Williams thread.

To call something misleading is to say it leads somewhere—but crucially, somewhere we didn’t intend, or that doesn’t fulfill the function we took ourselves to be engaging in. That’s not the same as saying there is a metaphysical end-point we ought to be led to; rather, it’s to say that a particular use diverts us from how the practice normally works or what it aims at internally. — Banno

So your last word “internally” seems to frame the whole position. Because phrases like “somewhere we didn’t intend” or “somewhere that …doesn’t fulfill the function we took ourselves to be engaging in” or “how the practice normally works or what it aims at..” seem to confuse the issue of whether “there is a metaphysical end-point” or not (since they all sound like euphemisms for metaphysical end-points or causes).

You appear to be saying that a philosopher’s best (or better) use of skills is to take models and language games and rigorously determine their consistencies and inconsistencies, confirm coherence, and root out incoherence. Philosophic language ought to be aiming at coherent and consistent models, internally, and can side-step judgments regarding correspondence type analyses that endeavor only to point externally to the world or “metaphysical end-points we ought to be led to.”

Are philosophers to frame their questions tightly focused on internal consistency, and build standards that are most uniquely philosophic when those standards are based on coherence, not correspondence?

You seem to be saying that all correspondence usages of “truth” or “facts about the world” should be left to physics models and agreed upon stipulated languages like biology, or mythology, or good literature. But philosophy remains best (or ‘better’ I should say to avoid reference to some ‘metaphysical end-point’) when it aims to weed out inconsistencies and incoherence from any language, from any logic.

To frame this another way, the better philosophical discussions are about whether a belief may be true because it is consistent internally with what it purports to say and actually does say as a model. Less rigorous philosophy unwittingly or carelessly falls back into discussing what is actually true, in the world, regardless of how things may have been worded (and regardless of the well-established epistemic and metaphysical problems correspondence entails).

Is that what you think, and somewhat what Williamson was getting at? Doing better means clarifying the coherent, not discovering the correspondent?

The reason for reading the canon is to improve on it. But in order to "improve" on it, one does not need already to have an idea of the perfect or ultimate item.
— Banno

Yes. In the arts, "improve" might better be thought of as "develop" or "enrich" or, of course, "react wildly against"! — J

I do agree that one “does not need already to have an idea of the perfect or ultimate item.” I agree because the subject of this sentence is an “item”. There is no ultimate item. At least not necessarily.

But then, how are we to ever mean “ultimate” - how is the word ever a valid part of a useful model? How, for instance, did I know there is no such thing as the ultimate item? How can we measure “improve” or “better” and apply them?

The point I was trying to make that for some reason seems to only interest me was that you in fact DO have the “ultimate” or “best” in mind whenever you say “enrich” or “progress” or “improve” - ultimate is your metaphysical measuring stick, or metaphysical end, or cause. It’s not an item, but a clear enough concept to tell you “that item over there ain’t the ultimate item.”

I suggested an example -- the battle of the bands -- in which we don't appear to need a constitutive idea of "best" in order to choose a winner. (Remember, we're both agreeing to reject that other reading of "best" which simply defines it as "top choice." That's not constitutive. That would be like saying that piety is what the gods love. It provides no content.) — J

I’ll get back to a constitutive example, but, I don’t think I rejected “top choice” as “best” - an idea like “top” will always be found near the idea of “best”. My point is that an idea like “best” will always be found near an idea like “better”.

You raise a good example of what I’m trying to point out. You said, “…’piety is what the gods love’… provides no content.”

So while I see that “piety is what the gods love” is a good example of circular reasoning or possible tautology between “piety” and “gods love”, which provides no content to “piety” internally and adds no measure of consistency to using “pious”; however, I also see that, for some other reason, you aren’t talking about say “brown” or “honey”.

“What is piety?” Piety is a sweet flavor, like honey. Or wait, piety is a brownish color, like mud. Or wait, “piety is what the gods love.”

So ‘what gods love” actually does provide some content, because I’m sure you know that, at the very least, piety is not like honey and brown. Piety is about the gods - that gets some work done. An idea like “piety” will only be found near an idea like “god”. This doesn’t ultimately define either, but the idea of “brown honey” is useless, that is for certain (somehow).

I think what I am trying to point to is indirectly reflected in this: just like it is hard to give a good constitutive example of a superlative ideal such as “best”, it is hard to give a good example of something wholly non-constitutive such “piety is what gods like” is not wholly non-consitutive. Speaking at all requires coherence AND a corresponding world for us communicate at all, for us to agree and disagree through language. (I think this needs to be developed, and its development would make distinctions between speaking and communicating where communicating requires a mind independent world in between two communicants, but I think I digress …)

But to finish my more general (but I think necessary for rigor) point. You and Banno seem to want to be able to develop content using words like “better” and “enrich” while avoiding inherent references to the ‘best’ and the ‘richest’. That to me is using words like “piety” without any orientation or end in site, in which case maybe piety is really green and smells funny. There needs to exist something upon which we both can agree, apart from us both, external to our language, about which we are speaking and possibly agreeing; not simply language. To use “better”, we need to see: 1) two things 2) being compared by some standard, to then form 3) agreement on which makes sense to call the “better” or not.

Analyzing 2) only, the standard, we are talking about a shoe-horning into the picture of a metaphysical measuring stick of worst-better-best. That is what “better” means in itself; it means that which is in between the worst and the best, but leaning towards the best (or something like that). Better entails worst and best, in itself, by definition, in every appropriate use. We need that to be the case, to use “better” at all.

But applying/using/testing this ideal laden measuring stick also requires items in the world, appraised by some standard (ie ‘music that is able to be danced to’ - which is ‘better’, x or y style of music). Marry the measuring stick of some specific standard, apply it to two or more items and you can debate and communicate which is “better”.

If we remove the metaphysical, we can’t have this debate.

And if we are always only looking for coherence and consistency, the content can always remain hypothetical and progress always means “yes, that’s coherent” or “no, that’s incoherent”. (Better becomes a weak judgement of something more plainly good or not good.)

Consider this: it is coherent and internally consistent to say this: ‘when comparing only two items, the one that is better is also the one this is best.’ This is a coherent understanding of “worst-better-best” in a context of two items, without any need to actually consider two actual objects in the world. I believe you are saying analyzing statements like this is philosophy’s best use, correct? So objects in the world are hypothetical, if needed at all, to do philosophy.

So now I ask you, must the best philosophy relegate itself to identifying and clarifying consistent/inconsistent and coherent/incoherent relations internal to systems/models? Or is there more to it that can still be rigorous and ought to be the work of philosophers?

The problem is that while "we all" can indeed make intelligible and rational claims in support of a given framework, another group of "us all" can dispute them, with equal rationality.
— J

How to you determine that every claim is made "with equal rationality"? — Leontiskos

Yes. No work can be done or progress made if one believes “equal rationality” applies to both sides of any dispute.

Rationality may exist on both sides, but how “equal”? The inequality of the rationality is what constitutes any dispute, whether one side (or both) are making invalid arguments and/or using unfounded facts.

Not a thing, but not nothing. — Wayfarer

That is the world I’m interested in. I don’t think the experts in speaking about this half-world are only priests and mystics and poets. I think there is rigorous philosophic work that can be done on whatever that is that you just referenced.

To give it some type of grounding, I call it, the personal. Persons don’t seem to equate to things, but can’t be denied as if nothing either.

Good stuff, Wayfarer. I’d love to be able to get rigorous about the unconditioned. I’d love to discuss “love” for instance, as a substance, like a thing, but not a thing, but not nothing. Seems eons away from where philosophy is today…

This whole thread for many pages has been many people trying to get a lightbulb to go off in NOS’s head.

If any such light did ever shine, NOS would say it was caused by his own head, thus refuting the fact that the lightbulb ever actually went off or discoloring the light. He’s got the perfect position to remain in his lonely world where another person’s words can have no impact.

How does he think censorship works? Is it accomplished by a muzzle? Or do words and court writings cause people to shut up? It makes no sense for him to care at all about censorship laws. End of discussion. We can’t penetrate the thick skull of NOS.

The sheer volume of people who disagree with him, from all sides of many other arguments doesn’t in itself give him pause. He’s waiting for someone’s words to smack him in the face. And pleased with himself that words don’t work that way. But not aware for some reason that words don’t work at all if they can’t cause physical effects.

Yes. Partly because of their cleverness. Untouchable, one might say with admiration.

Meanwhile philosophers can talk quietly amongst themselves at conferences and publish learned papers for each other. — Wayfarer

:up:

Or loudly, in the basement of the internet. Amongst themselves.

I will call out to Indian and current idealist philosophy from time to time, as their philosophies have not on the whole been subsumed under naturalism… — Wayfarer

Not yet subsumed, but I suspect only because it still feels impolite.

Is it a good thing to have that kind, when it comes to deciding what to assert as true? — J

Does philosophy ever assert what is true about the world?

ADDED:

I'm assuming you mean balls of the testicular variety? — J

Correct assumption. Which makes it true - out in the world, apart from your own models and modeling, I actually was thinking balls equal a testicular variety of material. Absolutely correct.

So, if you never committed a bad act, and in fact lived a super moral life, helping others in all instances, but you did it for the fame and failed to do bad because you knew you'd get caught… — Hanover

If we are basing the question of the OP on a hypothetical, experimental world, then I’m sure we can find that not all of us are bad.

But actually, we all do things we have already decided are bad - we do them anyway. I think that is objectively bad. So we are all bad.

The things phil says about these absolute conceptions are not put forward as true beyond the historical or cultural context of the philosopher -- they are not "known to be true" in the same way that the absolute conception knows things to be true. — J

Or, philosophy is like science with no balls.

When we say to ourselves that we know right from wrong, and then we still do what is wrong, if that is bad, then yes, we are all bad people.

God kills us all, innocent and guilty alike. — unenlightened

In this context, it’s more accurate to say we’ve all killed ourselves - all are guilty.

Bob, I always feel respected by you without you saying it, so no need. Have at it! I hope you see that Inrespect you as well.

That said, reading through these posts, I have some honest questions for you. I see a lot of contradictions and incompatible positions in your reading of the OT.

Do you think God is all good and all just?
Or do you think God orders evil and commits injustices?

Do you think God is not capable of committing evil?
Or do you think God is capable of committing evil?

Do you think the OT tells history, or it does not?

Do you think the Bible ever tells lies to us, purporting to describe events that are fictional as if they were historical?
Do you think God reveals himself to us through the OT or not? If so, is God a historical figure in the OT or the NT or both, or neither?

Did Abraham and Moses live and worship the same God whom Jesus called Father and whose Holy Spirit remains with us to this day, or no?

I can’t really tell your answers to these.

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. — Bob Ross

So God is good, but the alleged God of the OT is not good, and so the OT is false history of what God did; God didn’t actually do what the OT says God did. That’s what you think.

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. — Bob Ross

So killing of innocents is bad, but killing of Canaanites is justified, but not killing all Canaanites; God was ok killing some innocent Canannites, but not ok committing genocide of all Canaanites, innocent ones or not. That can be inferred from what you just said here.

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. — Bob Ross

So the OT is not about history, and though it purports to be history, many of this purported history is not history but is spiritual lessons, although some of things happened historically to some extent.

And the alleged historical God of the OT is not about love, peace, justice, eternal life, goodness, hope, faith, charity, humility, mercy, forgiveness and redemption - but instead, in the OT, alleged God is basically a God of wrath and enforcement of law and demonstration of power, and sometimes evil deeds. We should read the OT to learn lessons, but not as containing any facts.

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 — Bob Ross

Is God capable of committing sin or not, and is God a moral agent or not?

I agree that God is a moral agent AND that he is not capable of sinning. But these contradict each other. How is that possible?
Maybe, God does not follow the law like we must, though maybe he follows the law like the Son does the will of the Father. But God, simultaneously IS the law. God is the word, and God is with the word. “The word was with God, and the word was God.” God became man, and the man Jesus, the son of God, both is the Law as God, and follows and fulfills the law as the Son of man. Jesus is the way, and those on the way must follow the law. But those merely on the way cannot always see God’s ways (or see them without God’s help to understand).

So linear LNC reasoning can’t really see how the Son has two natures, man and God, where one is capable of sinning and the other is not, but the other is still a moral agent. This takes deeper discussion, but if one didn’t believe a logical explanation was possible (because God was genocidal), then what are we talking for.

the OT seems incompatible to me with the NT. — Bob Ross

This is not what Jesus wanted anyone to think. There is one God in the Bible. From Genesis to Revelations - one and the same God, known to Abraham, to Moses, to Saul, to Peter and to Paul. The OT is perfectly compatible with the NT.

If you think the two are incompatible, then Moses and Abraham were only fools; Peter and Paul were the first to know God.

Are you saying Jesus was tricking the Jewish people when He upheld all of the law of Moses and referred to the God the Jews knew and lived as Farher?

they did kill at least some children. — Bob Ross

So the one God, or for you, the alleged God of the OT, ordered unjust, evil, killing of children.
Or the OT is just misleading and confusing, historically and/or spiritually?

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). — Bob Ross

Exactly - these refer to many of my questions for you. Is the OT history or not? Is God all good or not? Does the Bible tell some historical lies in order to make some other spiritual points, but if taken literally it would be telling lies? Is God in the OT or not and is this the same God as the NT or not.

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. — Bob Ross

I believe God is all-good, all-just. Period. Never in question as I seek to understand what God says and does.
There is only one God, revealed to us over time, expressly, since Abraham. So God made himself directly known to history and to me from the OT.

I believe we can know of God through natural reason (Aristotle was the first to do this best), but we would not know very much of the specific personality and thoughts and intentions of this natural God, like Abraham did and like Jesus is, without revelation. You are asking about God’s intentions and thoughts, not about God’s nature.

Why conclude from natural reason that God loves every single person? Why conclude from natural reason that if God was a man he would do what Jesus did and die on a cross to save me from my sins? These are not reasonable by natural reason alone.

You say we can know God through reason and our own natural gifts, but then, Jesus referred to the God of Abraham and the whole of the OT lovingly as his Father, and yet you don’t see this as truth. You see the father Jesus spoke of as possibly committing genocide of children.

It is contradictory to say you can know God through reason, and to believe what Jesus said about the OT. Unless you are not a Christian, in which case you can believe whatever parts of this you want.

Don’t get me wrong - it is ok to have doubts and to need to understand more - at least I hope so for my sake!

But this all seems very confused and the point of my prior posts is that the method to understand it cannot be to simply use reason alone.

God doesn’t commit evil murdering genocide - even if he floods the earth.
That can’t be a premise or a conclusion about God (not on any normal definition of “genocide”), because God is all good and all-just.

God told Saul to do a lot of things including to kill all. If Saul did exactly what God told him, then it would be entirely on God to justify what happened. But Saul didn’t do exactly what God said to do - what Saul did, therefore, was Saul’s will, not God’s. Now evil can be found. If you want to blame unjustifiable killing of children on anyone, you can choose those of us who don’t listen to God to blame.

God takes care of all children justly.

Or, if you want to say what God thinks and what God loves and hates can be known from what Saul does in God’s name and if you want to say you know what those murdered children think and who they fear and who they love and who saves them and who destroys them, be my guest but I don’t think you do. That’s not natural reason. Genocide is a human invention and a human deed. So is murder. And death and all of our suffering is a wage and debt God did not ask us to incur - we chose it ourselves. God seems to work to take away death and the wages and evils and burdens of sin. Such work is nasty work.

Does it perplex you that you don’t understand?
Or does it trouble you that God is an unjust evil doer?
Or does it not trouble you and you think God is simply not in the OT?
Or are you doubting your faith?
Or are you doubting your reason?

We need to see how God thinks and how God reasons. We are asking for God to explain himself to us.
I agree there is a reasonable explanation for the apparent atrocities, but that explanation can never prove “God commits injustice and evil” or I need to keep looking for explanations.
I call the atrocities “apparent atrocities”. I don’t assume what God does are atrocities and call him “apparent God”.
If the explanation concluded “God commits injustice and evil” then God isn’t God and there is nothing to question - the OT and what Jesus said of his Father are all lies.

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

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”. -FireOlogist

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? — Bob Ross

You are conflating judging actions with judging souls. We have to convict murderers and put them in jail for life. We can learn this from natural reason. Period. That’s politics, survival and common sense. That has nothing to do with judging them as evil doers who we would put in hell for eternity. That is never up to me, nor can I possibly make that judgment.

Your OP doesn’t ask whether a God like the the God in the OT should go to jail, you ask whether such a being is evil (and so not the God you want to know).

Vengeance and ultimate justice are for God. We better be careful when we convict murderers (which we usually are), we better show mercy when we sentence them, and forgive them when we visit and care for them in prison - we’ve learned this is God’s way by revelation of Jesus Christ, and if you look carefully, in the OT just as well.

I’m not saying we should ever abandon natural reason - I’m not saying there is not a reasonable explanation for the actions of God in the OT. I’m saying the evidence we need, to use our reason to understand does not simply come from nature. Eyes and and earthly educations ALONE cannot show us God is good. We need to hear God himself to know his heart.

Why did God wait for you and me to come into being to ask him for these explanations? He says because he loves us. Are we so lovable after all, now that he created us with all of our reason and lived experiences, that we would accuse him of sin, evil and injustice for things we really don’t know about, and may have participated in without God’s command? It all seems weak to me, and in need of prayer as much as anything else like our reason alone.

So you should know, there ARE reasonable explanations. The approach to those answers is not one that doesn’t involve God telling us what he was thinking and who God is. This is not all about what the facts are.

Same thing about a murderer. Murderers need to go to jail on the facts. But unforgiven punishment in hell? We need to know the murderer’s heart. Where does Jesus find evidence that. Murderer is lovable? How does God love a person who sins against him? I don’t think God uses reason alone when judging us.

So I am not saying your questions aren’t good ones, nor that answers don’t have to be reasonable, but that approaching this problem like a scientist/mathematician /philosopher ONLY, and not like a child seeking God’s help to answer, knowing that God can and will answer everything, leads to all of the contradictions in your positions above.

Bottom line. God never does evil. So we need to find out how God treated the Cannaanites and all of us reasonably when we are murdered and drowned. We can’t seek how the God of the OT was not actually God, because everything else that is good about the Bible falls apart if “evil God” so “Biblical lies” is anything close to an explanation.

How do you think Abraham approached questions for God?
What did Moses think was reasonable when he listened to a burning bush for evidence of God’s intentions? Or when he chastised his people because of a golden calf, but built a bronze serpent to heal them?
You won’t be able to penetrate these things with natural reason alone.

Good stuff. As usual, saying what I am trying to say, but more rigorously.

@Bob Ross, I would just add something about method and approach with these questions. I find we can approach questions about God in three ways. We can be biased against him, biased for him, or attempting to be unbiased. And I think one needs a bit of bias for God in order to even recognize the evidence.

Unbiased is the purely philosophical way. But we are talking about a Creator of the universe and miracle worker, so I find that we are constantly using evidence and reasoning that is not really observable or from the natural world.

When Peter told Jesus he was the Son of the living God, Jesus didn’t congratulate Peter for figuring this out himself since Peter had seen all of Jesus’ miracles and because it certainly made sense - Jesus said that the Holy Spirit revealed this in Peter. And if you think about getting to know who any person is, all of our observations are only evidence of something we believe, and that could only be confirmed by the person saying “yes, that is me”, because we are all spirits. The observable is outward sign of the invisible that is thereby revealed. The evidence we seek to evaluate in determining how an all-good God commanded the killing of children, will only be found in spirit. Our natural, unbiased powers will be helpful, but never enough. This is something Count points to.

So that brings us to the approaches that are biased. If we are biased against God, why would we believe or understand his revelations and creative and miraculous powers? So we can not really make progress questioning God if we are able to doubt major premises about God. If we start with the conclusion “therefore God has done evil in the OT” we are biased against the premise “God is all good and would never do evil.”

So this brings us to the right approach to me. I know that God is all-good. I am biased in favor 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.

So the question you are asking, to me, is not how is God able to do such horrible things, it is simply what am I misunderstanding about these things. So during the time I misunderstand these things, I am not anxious that my reason will ever conclude that “therefore God is sinning”. The temporary situation and question is always my understanding of the OT. I am anxious that I have not understood why God did what he did, not who God is.

So here:

The God of the OT commanded Saul to put the Amalekites under the ban
There were innocent children among the Amalekites
Therefore, the God of the OT commanded the killing of the innocent
The killing of the innocent is unjust
Therefore, the God of the OT is unjust — Leontiskos

That seems sound and the reason we are concerned is because our definition of God (unstated in the argument) is that God would never be unjust.

So the point is, since no one here wants to redefine God or find that God can sometimes be unjust, the argumentation and education will always be about how we define justice and sin and the acts themselves. God has already revealed himself to us as all-good. We aren’t questioning that. We aren’t even questioning what “good” itself is. God is goodness. Nothing we conclude with our reason will ever be settled on “God is unjust.”

So the process Count is pointing to to figure this all out HAS TO call into question your (our) understanding of what God meant to show us by his deeds, not call into question the righteousness of God’s deeds. This is about our understanding, not about judgment of God.

Bottom line, to me, we are asking God to justify his actions and intentions to us, and the only truly humble way of doing this is to start the question knowing absolutely that there is a justification, and that God remains all good and never sinful. We use our reason and gather the evidence retaining faith in the conclusion we already know - God is always good and loves each any every person.

Maybe I didn’t need to say any of this.

And as I said before, seeking to understand God better is what life is all about, so, with a humble approach, your OP is certainly doing a good thing.

(Although because I am admitting my bias, I think I am also confessing this isn’t really doing philosophy - it’s theology, and better than that, it’s prayer and asking God to come to reveal himself to our understanding. And there are some good folks around here who can be vessels of such revelations.)

I think you can make a case that knowing an ideal type or goal is important in some kinds of inquiry. Why don't you try to construct such a specific case? -- it'd be worth doing, I think. — J

You know how when you walk down the street you can’t bump into “13” - it’s a concept only existing in the mind. Numbers painted are shapes and colors, but “13” is a concept.

“Best” is like that.
So is “better”.

All I’m saying is that if you invoke “better” about any thing or as any concept, you have invoked “best” and “worst” as well.

Does that help?

Why is “better” so damn useful? Because the people who use it know how to use “best” and “worst”. And when really known, I think, you see that best highlights worst and these both generate what is between them namely, the better or worse.

I think the crux of the contention here is you are holding a thing, an apple, and don’t need or care about worst or best. If you would skip using ‘better’ and just say each apple is incomparable, I’d have no issue. But if you want to group two things and compare them, you have entered the metaphysical world of the ideal, and “appleness” becomes one of our questions, and with “better” among apples “best” becomes a measurement of one of our standards. — Fire Ologist

Banno,

I can see you are being patient with me and I appreciate it.

If I sound like I am repeating myself, it is because 1) I don’t think you are seeing what I’m saying and therefore 2) your replies aren’t hitting the mark for me.

We are in the middle of so many philosophical works right now so I think it is worth the pain.

Even if no “best” exists, you can still say one thing is better than another. — Banno

You said “thing”. As to a thing, in hand, “even if no ‘best’ thing exists, Incan still find one thing is ‘better’.”
I agree with that.

I then ask “what do I really mean when I say this thing is ‘better than’ another?”

Now I can put the thing down and conceptualize the measuring stick in my mind and then, post hoc, affix “better” to that thing.

Is “best” always explicit or cognized when we judge better? — Banno

My answer is yes. I have to know the concept (absent any exemplar ‘thing’) of “best” when I use a measuring that identifies any thing as “better” - the measuring stick, my concept, is “worst-better-best”. There is where best lives, in my concepts, as the measurement itself.
‘Better’ is a measure of “bestness”.

The ideal may be an asymptotic or regulative concept, not a concrete one: Perhaps “best” is a kind of horizon we approach but never fully reach. We use it as a guide, not necessarily as a fixed known point. — Banno

That sounds like something I would say. I have some areas I would want to clarify, but, this is basically it.

Practical usage often doesn’t require the best: When choosing between two apples, you don’t need to know the best apple in the world; just which one tastes better. — Banno

But here we fall back to earth (or focus not on the conceptual but instead on the concrete) and lose sight of the measuring stick where best most perfectly stands. Here I would fall back and say who cares about the rest of the world - there are two apples, give me the best one.

The “scale” might be constructed post hoc: Sometimes we impose a scale after seeing the comparisons, rather than having it given beforehand. — Banno

The scale is definitely post hoc. The two apples sitting there with no minds applied to them each think they are perfect, and they are. We build the scale. We apply it to the apples. But the scale isn’t lesser greater greater still. The scale, like the apples, is finite and simple and identifiable as one scale, with a start at ‘worst’ going all the way to an end at ‘best’.

I’m not trying to play volley ball or tennis with you. I am honestly trying to work this out.

I think the crux of the contention here is you are holding a thing, an apple, and don’t need or care about worst or best. If you would skip using ‘better’ and just say each apple is incomparable, I’d have no issue. But if you want to group two things and compare them, you have entered the metaphysical world of the ideal, and “appleness” becomes one of our questions, and with “better” among apples “best” becomes a measurement of one of our standards.

it is that it absolves God of any moral responsibility. God is a person and persons are moral agents. — Bob Ross

I wasn’t clear. I’m not saying God isn’t a moral agent and that because He is God he gets to do evil and have it not called evil.

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.

I’m saying all moral agency exists under an authority. I know my authority - it is God. My duty is to follow the will of God. I know I am moral most perfectly to the extent I know I am doing what God tells me to do.
But God’s duty and who is God’s authority, is himself. I only know God by revelation. God hasn’t revealed to me HOW what He does is all-good and always justified and never evil. God knows these things. God can explain them to me. And God will explain them if/when I seek them.

And God has a lot of explaining to do about our suffering.

But I don’t think we people, even if we were all philosopher saints, can figure this out ourselves. It has to be revealed.

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 would answer this question “no”. This is why Jesus tells us not to judge our brothers and to leave justice to God.

We can’t even fairly judge each other - how can we conclude God is evil?

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’m not saying this is not an important conversation. It’s the problem of evil, written about since Job and and since Adam and Eve. Why was Abel allowed to be murdered? I’m saying this is a theological question, mot a philosophical question. It’s a personal question we have to take up ultimately with God.

And if we find the answer in this life, the answer is not going to be found absent revelation - basically, we all need to ask God “why have you forsaken me?” I personally believe he will show me how, despite my days in this desert, I was never forsaken and will be satisfied (so long as I seek Him).

——

But left to my own wits, does God ask any one of us, or anyone in the OT to undergo anything Jesus (God) would not undergo willingly if asked by the Father? Is there any injustice done to my body if it is done because God asked me to do it? Is there any glory and honor that can be fashioned out of hard work, even unto death?

I think you can find that:
1. We cannot know the reasoning and will of God except only when he tells us (much like all persons, although we men and women are more predictable in our weakness). So we cannot judge Him, at least we must withhold judgment, (allow Him His day in our court so to speak). This is why we cannot judge each other’s sins, and why we can boldly demand “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
2. 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) - we all have already earned death for ourselves so much so that any particular death might be an act of mercy for all we will one day know.
3. We will one day know justice.

These are the better conversations there are on this earth. But they are not merely philosophical, if they are philosophical at all. 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.

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

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.”
God has a lot of explaining to do if this is how he treats his friends, but I have faith we will have our explanation and it will be better than we could ever devise ourselves.

Just because some things are better than others doesn't mean there's a best. “Better” only implies “best” under artificially limited conditions. Otherwise, the concept of “best” isn’t required. — Banno

I’m saying “better” always relies on a “best”.

Better exists on a scale of worst to best. You don’t see the better “thing” without knowing the “best” as ideal. “Best and worst” are the standard. The ideal, to which you hold up things and find them always somewhere in the middle.

5. It is unjust to directly intentionally kill an innocent person (viz., it is wrong to murder);
6. It is unjust to own a person as property; and
7. It is unjust to rape someone. — Bob Ross

From what I can tell reading your posts you are a good man Bob.

An immediate adjustment here is to humbly accept that the above rules apply to you and me, not God. The commandments say “THOU shalt not murder.” God was telling us. Jesus followed all of those laws as a man, but who knows if he has to as God, the creator of mankind and our universe. So immediately we can recognize that maybe we are not in a position to judge the goodness and badness of God’s actions.

We are told God is all good, by God. And if we have faith, we believe, and rely, on this. Keep that in one hand held close to your heart as you ask these questions.

So when God floods the earth and kills the “innocent” (another judgment of others we may not be in a position to make accurately), we can rightly trust that justice is for God to ultimately decide, and so we will have to ask God and expect Him to answer, but not now in the meantime think He can’t explain it.

So you and me can’t murder, and you and me can expect God to justify all things, and you and me can’t judge another as innocent (as to God) or sinful (as to God) and should just focus on ourselves and our actions and ask what laws God has for us (what is His will).

But all of that said - God can justify death in afterlife. It may not be murder when God takes life - meaning both who are we to judge God a murderer, and who are we to know God’s ways and plans?

I believe Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are one God. And Jesus, the Son, referred to the God of the OT as his Father. So there is no difference between the God of the OT and the NT. If you look hard you see Jesus and the Father share the same Holy Spirit. Jesus made hard decisions and caused pain and division and inevitable death, and the God of the OT showed tenderness, mercy, forgiveness, and love.

It’s all there and worth looking for and understanding better, for all of us, for all time.

This discussion, to me, is not really for a philosophy forum. Because the best answers is to read the Bible and study it and pray over it with other people who love God. God will reveal himself to you more readily in that than what will likely happen here on the forum. Nothing against the forum, and I love the fact that you ask this question, but I have some trepidation.

It's a metaphor. Explaining art is philosophy, — frank

And I think it’s a good one - experiencing art as art is an active participation and a sort of dialogue with the art, where something is planted and something can grow as one continues to experience the art. This metaphor, if more analytically rendered, would be a good part of a methodological critique of art. Can we measure how much does the artwork plant a growing seed? And maybe the seed planting/growing is the interested part, and the “explaining art” measurement aspect is where the disinterest comes in.

So though I might sound like I am agreeing with you by liking your metaphor, we may actually still be disagreeing a bit here? I’m not sure what to make of this:

philosophy, which I think is an activity that stands apart from language games. — frank

I don’t think “gaming” as I understand Witt or others might mean it (that is, the language game is meaningless without a use) is essential to all language, so I could agree with this quote. There is rational activity that stands apart from Wittgensteinian type language games. (There is a language that would survive Witt’s whole system - the one that gives meaning to “throw away the ladder”.)

But I also think, in another sense, all language always plays with the world as opposed to language being made of or part of the world, and as a separate thing from the world, could be called the play or game of knowing/speaking; from this view, there is no spoken activity, ie philosophy, that is apart from language games. In this view, words do a good job of referencing things in themselves or essences (occasionally).

(In other words, I think, Witt saw language as a game with all it’s moving parts internal to itself, and the “world” was more simply certain words inside the game and need not have anything to do with the world - from this view, I disagree with Witt and so could agree with you that philosophy stands apart from language games because philosophy really is about the real world distinct from its language. However, philosophy and language are not themselves walking around the world to be discovered. We must use language to build a philosophy of the world. In this sense language is a gay science (gay recalling the playfulness of gaming) - language is always the game. It’s just that the game is about living in the world even a world in itself, absent language.)

art is like seeds that sprout in the souls of the observers.
if you aren't fond … It's that you're rocky terrain for that particular seed. — frank

‘Seed planting and seed sprouting or not sprouting’ is an analysis of all art. You set up a language game.

The way a piece of art gains value in our world is a reflection of the capitalism that pervades it — frank

That’s another game - a lousy one (to the true art lover) that would be ill-advised to play if you didn’t know how to play the seed sprouting game (because new seeds can sprout for hundreds of years where art is really art, but investment values change for the worse all of the time).

I must apply reason and logic to intuitive and aesthetic beliefs. — RussellA

If you would keep the linear constructions of reason and logic, along with the wholistic constructions of intuitive and aesthetic beliefs, all under the purview of philosophy, I think we are both walking a straight line onto the same whole page. :grin:

Yes, that's the question under discussion. Don't draw a line under it yet! We're just getting started. :smile: — J

I agree. What I am saying isn’t crystal clear to me.

I need to think on the Battle of the Bands analogy to directly address it and will get back. I think I’m saying the sense of ‘best’ that is collapsed into the ‘better of choices’ is the same and only ‘best’ there ever is. We don’t have to reify anything discreet between ‘better than’ and ‘best’ once we set a limit (meaning we limit the world to two bands, and the one that is better becomes the one that is best); if there were 4 bands, one would be worst, another better, another better still, and one would be best, but none of that analysis happens without some standard (ideal) measuring stick that must have worst and best on it at the very least.

Or go back to my light switch analogy. On/off represent the superlative ideals. Dim represents where we live in the middle. If we call everything in the middle some level of dim, the light has to be on at all before it is dim. The on-ness of the light, is the best-ness of the better-than.

We can't compare items in terms of qualities they may share unequally without 1) understanding that there indeed may be an ideal amount/kind/degree of said qualities, even if we don't know what it is; and 2) understanding how to use superlatives. — J

I think I am saying for 1 that we show an understanding that there indeed IS an ideal.

So this sounds ontological - like some platonic form of the ideal is out there for us to grab and make a measuring stick. I think I am tabling the ontological question. How an ideal exists, I don’t know. But as soon as I say “this thing is better than that thing”, I am admitting into the world the presence of an ideal I am talking about. So maybe the ontological reality of the “best” thing is me saying “best” - my mind IS Plato’s universe of the forms.

But regardless of all that speculation, I don’t get past the “better than” starting line without simultaneously getting past the “best” starting line. “Better than” doesn’t work, has no use, means nothing, without the baggage (or bonus) of “best”.