If you think creating round squares is "something" that an omnipotent being should be able to, then consistency would have you believe that geometry should encompass "shapes" like triangular pentagons or round-squares. — Philosopher19

Doesn't follow. Again, you don't seem to understand what omnipotence involves. It doesn't involve actually making round circles or actually making the law of non-contradiction false. It involves having the 'power' to do those things.

So, the law of non-contradiction is true. Okay? It is 'true'. Not false. True.

But Reason - whose law it is - can make it false. She has the power to rewrite any and all laws of Reason, for they're her laws and that's how they became laws in the first place.

So, a square circle is not currently a thing, because Reason forbids it from being so. But precisely because that is why it is not a thing, Reason and Reason alone has the power to make it a thing and make one. See?

And that's why meaningful discussion is possible: for I am not saying taht any of the laws of logic are false, rather I am saying that there is one amongst us who has the power to make them false, and that person is Reason herself, who is God.

What you are doing in trying to show that God exists of necessity, is offending God. For you are saying that she 'must' exist - that there is something higher than God that keeps her, indeed forces her - into existence. And that's very, very confused. ANd like I say, heretical. You have actually made her less powerful than yourself in an important respect, for you can take yourself out of existence whereas you're insisting that she cannot. How offensive is that? And how silly is that - how silly to think that God can't take herself out of existence if she so wishes. And how silly - and so obviously contradictory - to think that being constrained by logic makes one more powerful than a being who is not so constrained! The absurdity is so absolute it hurts. And the irony - it is you, matey, not I, who is violating the law of non-contradiction.

I have explained why your ontological argument fails, and why any ontological argument for God will fail. It fails, for God does not exist of necessity but contingently.

I think you do not know what a 'demonstration' is, or what arguments do. They extract the implications of their premises. So pointing out that if you change the premises you get a different conclusion is just silly. Yes. The point is to feed in true premises - then you find out what they imply. That's how reasoning works. That's why we don't just bump around the world relying on instinct.

Like I say, before asking me to provide a demonstration you should have had the decency to tell me that you don't know what one of those is and that as far as you are concerned we can a just believe what we want and there's no way of knowing what this life is about.

Incidentally, anyone who thinks 180proof has made a valuable contribution is, well, beyond hope. Anyway, many lifetimes here await you, methinks.

So you are denying the validity of my argument?

You simply assumed God did not exist after I just provided you with a proof that he did. You didn't challenge a premise in my argument, you just pointed out that by changing the premises one changes the conclusion. That's neither here nor there. The issue is whether the premises are true. And in my argument's case I cannot see any grounds for doubting a single one of them. Again, do you deny there are imperatives of Reason? Do you deny that minds and minds alone can issue imperatives? Do you deny that a mind whose imperatives constitute imperatives of Reason - so, the mind of Reason - would be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent? You have said nothing to challenge those claims.

So you must be challenging the validity of the argument. And your grounds for doing so are what? No more, it would seem, than the brute possibility that despite appearing valid it may not be. Well, about what proof of anything could you not do that? That's just an arbitrary radical scepticism that you will adopt whenever an argument leads to a disliked conclusion. It's just to say 'but how can we know anything?' Not systematically, but just when it suits. It's once more the self indulgent 'if I don't like it, it ain't true' attitude rearing its head.

You asked for a demonstration and I provided one. If you were sceptical about the power of all demonstrations to show us anything you should have said before asking me to provide one so that I could know that doing so would be pointless.

I did prove God. Imperatives of reason exist. Only a mind can issue an imperative. Therefore the imperatives of reason are the imperatives of an existent mind. And that mind will be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent for the reasons I gave. That's a proof.

What are these moral standards? Are we talking the ten commandments or a version of such? — CountVictorClimacusIII

The commands constitutive of morality. Moral standards are standards, yes? Well, those. I don't know why you mention the 10 commandments. You must be supposing me a CHristian or something, even though nothing in my arguments gave you any ground for that. I am not a CHristian, I just follow reason.

To find out what is right and what is wrong - so, what we are bid do, and what we are bid not do - one uses one's faculty of reason, the mechanism whereby Reason gives us the opportunity to reform (not that she cares much whether we do or not).

Following this idea, it seems we are stuck playing a game of which we don't even know the rules. — CountVictorClimacusIII

No, the implication is that rehabilitation - so knowing and doing as Reason bids - is not the primary reason we're here. Hence why the rules are not always crystal clear. What's the alternative - that she made them unclear because she loves us so much?!

To stress again: she doesn't like us. Clearly. She's nice enough that she's given us some insight into what we have to do if we're to stand any chance of release. But she's not gone out of her way or made matters crystal clear. Don't you think she'd have made it clear if reform was the whole point of the exercise?

The original act of depravity we have committed must have been extreme, for a God to punish us so for eternity. — CountVictorClimacusIII

I didn't mention eternity. Why would it be eternity?

This God does not seem omnibenevolent at all then. If she were, then wouldn't she seek to rehabilitate us rather than to punish us? Or is this a do some evil for the greater good type scenario? In which case this God is capable of evil. Therefore, cannot be omnibenevolent. A God that freely allows us to wallow in our ignorance, and allows all the evils of the world to occur to us, on random chance (think of children that die too young, or suffer needlessly in isolation and despair in parts of our world that have the lowest of standards of living); is not a benevolent God. The fact that we are left ignorant in our depravity, deprives us of the very opportunity to correct our wrongdoing. — CountVictorClimacusIII

Question begging. You're assuming you're innocent and that so is everyone else here. No matter what I argue you're going to keep making that assumption. The evidence is that you're not. If you think otherwise, identify a false premise in my demonstration. For you asked me for a demonstration, and I gave you it. But now it seems that it doesn't count and you're free to assume you're innocent despite the demonstration that you're not.

A good person doesn't like evil people. A good person dislikes them. A good person doesn't think that someone who's behaved abysmally deserves the same benefits as someone who's behaved well. A good person is outraged at bad things happening to innocent people. By the same token, they are not outraged when bad things happen to blameworthy people - to people who were actively trying to visit such bad things on innocent others.

Harms are not always morally bad and benefits not always morally good. It matters who gets the benefits. It was not a good thing that Dr Mengele, the Angel of Death at Auschwitz, lived out the remainder of his live in luxury in South America. That isn't a fact that, upon learning, makes a good person think "ah, well at least some good came of it!". Someone who had that thought - someone who saw Dr Mengele's post holocaust success as a silver lining - is morally corrupt, not a saint.

So, living well and enjoying yourself are not always good - sometimes they're bad. A good person helps others, but they don't help a burglar to jimmy open a window. A good person does not help others indiscriminately. So, good people are not opposed to all suffering and in favour of all happiness. It matters whose happiness it is.

You are crudely assuming that happiness is an unalloyed good and suffering an unalloyed bad. But if you reflect, your reason will tell you that that's false. And therein lies another clue, if any were needed, as to why you are here. You are assuming a crude and empty picture of what moral goodness involves. It doesn't involve an absence of hate, or an absence of a desire to harm. Good people hate - it matters who you hate - and good people desire that harm comes to people - they just care who.

Our existence then is pointless beyond the act of just serving out our time. — CountVictorClimacusIII

How is it pointless? It has a point. It's just a point most of us would rather it not have. (Doesn't it make you a bit suspicious that most people think the point of their life happens to be a point they'd like it to have?).

And yes, I can see the logic of the form of your argument if we accept the premise as true. — CountVictorClimacusIII

Ah, the self-indulgence rears its head again. The premises are all self-evidently true. It's not in your gift to make them false by just denying them. That's got a name - it's called 'the idiot's veto'.

2 + 2 = 4. If you think it = 5 you're wrong. You can assume it all you like, it won't = 5.

You can think my argument invalid. But it isn't. It's valid as those with reason can tell.

And you can just reject a premise. But that won't make any of them false. They're all true. THey just lead to a conclusion you dislike. And you think, mistakenly, that your attitudes determine reality and thus that your dislike of the conclusion is evidence that a premise is false. Yes? You're not reforming your ways at all! You, like so many others, prefer to listen to yourself than to Reason. Oh well - that's why you're here!

Define morally perfect, or objective morals. What standard are you measuring man to exactly? What makes us depraved? Are we all depraved? How? Why? — CountVictorClimacusIII

We are supposing God to exist. God is omnipotent - so he can do anything and is not subject to any constraints. By itself we can conclude from this that moral standards are set by God - that is, for an act to be right is for it to be an act God wills us to perform, and for something to be morally good is for it to be approved of by God. For unless this were so, there would be a standard external to God that God did not have power over. Technically, then, these are not 'objective' standards, for they are constitutively determined by the attitudes of a subject - God. They are subjective standards, but they are external to ourselves.

I have demonstrated in the only way that anything can be demonstrated - that is, by ratiocination - that we are depraved. Here:

1. If God exists, she would not permit innocent creatures to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
2. God exists
3. Therefore, God does not permit innocent creatures to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
4. We are living in ignorance in a dangerous world
5. Therefore, we are not innocent (that is, we are depraved).

And yes, that applies to all of us, for it is rebarbative to Reason to suppose that an omnipotent omnibenevolent being would suffer any innocent experiencing subject to languish here.

To be clear: that argument is deductively valid. So if its premises are true, then its conclusion is established whether anyone likes it or not.

You ask 'how?' Well, by having freely done wrong. You ask 'why?' I do not know what you are asking. Are you inquiring into our past motives for having done wrong? Well, I do not know. To return to my hospital bed analogy: you may well wonder what accident or medical crisis led to you being in the hospital. But your inability to know - and the inability of other patients to be able to tell you - does not give you grounds for thinking that you are not, in fact, in a hospital and did not suffer an accident or medical crisis. Likewise, that you can't remember what immoral deed you did that landed you here, does not give you grounds for thinking that such a deed is not what landed you here, or that this is not a prison.

Your rehabilitation idea is interesting though. Are we to assume here, that the goal is to elevate ourselves from our depravity? — CountVictorClimacusIII

No, that's not the main goal at all, that's simply an opportunity we have been given. An omnipotent being has no problem realizing her goals - she could eradicate our depravity in the blink of an eye if she wanted. (Plus it is not always clear what the right thing to do is, yet it would be crystal clear if rehabilitation was a primary goal). Again, we are not living here for our benefit - the idea that we are is heretical for it supposes that God was incapable of giving us such benefits absent the harms, or that God is an arsehole and only likes giving people benefits if she can harm you as well into the bargain. Either thought reveals a corrupt nature on the part of the thinker. The goal - which she could realize in any way she wanted, but has chosen this way - is to protect others from us and to give us our just deserts. Those who look to the world with all it contains and see in it an expression of love are revealing the extent of their self-love and stupidity. They think they're so loveable that someone's built a world for them to live in. A world that contains every horror you can conceive of and the constant risk that at any time one of those horrors will be visited upon you. This might give them some pause, but their stupidity and self-love comes to the rescue and they are soothed by the idiot thought that somehow these horrors are designed to enhance the love between then and the other. And so they skip around with a rictus grin on their face, mouthing self-serving inanities to each other and breeding, when all they're actually doing is making the God hate them ever more and increasing their sentence. It's funny really.

Ultimately, to find your own meaning and to grow — CountVictorClimacusIII

Again, that's pointless and arrogant. The meaning - the purpose - of your life is not in your gift. Any purpose you want your life here to serve is impotent to make that the purpose of your life, for it is too late on the scene. THe purpose of your life here was determined by another, not by you. For you did not create this place and did not put yourself here. So how on earth can you then claim to be able to be the source of its purpose? I may choose to decorate my cell, but that does not mean that the purpose of my being in the cell is to decorate it. It's just something I'm doing, but it is not the purpose of the cell or the purpose of my being in it.

The meaning of your life is discovered, not made. It is discovered if one chooses to follow Reason. If you listen to Reason you will discover that Reason is a person, and that she's omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. And if you listen some more, you'll discover that you're not innocent. And thus that you are in a prison. And thus that the purpose of your life - regardless of what purpose you adopt while living it - is protection and retribution, with rehabilitation not as a primary purpose, but an opportunity that you can take up or not as you choose. To think the purpose of your life is something else is not thereby to have made it something else. Reality is not like that: it's not a plaything of our will.

How is it demonstrably true? I have some idea of where you might be headed, but would rather have you clarify and expand on this idea so I can comment back on it with clarity. — CountVictorClimacusIII

There are imperatives of reason. A demonstration is itself an appeal to one. For instance, it is an imperative of reason that arguments of this form

1. If P, then Q
2. P
3. Therefore Q

entail their conclusions. And moral imperatives are imperatives of Reason. And imperatives of prudence are imperatives of Reason. So, logic, prudence and morality are all made of imperatives of Reason. They cannot reasonably be doubted (their content, yes, but not their existence). So, this premise cannot reasonably be doubted:

1. There are imperatives of Reason

Imperatives are commands - it's just another word for a command. And only a mind can issue commands. Thus this premise is self-evidently true:

2. Only a mind can issue an imperative

From which it follows that

3. The imperatives of Reason are imperatives an existent mind is issuing

The mind in question would not be bound by its own imperatives and thus would be omnipotent. And they would know everything, for Reason is the arbiter of knowledge. And they would be omnibenevolent because they would approve of themselves (they are omnipotent, so if they disapproved of any aspect of themselves, they could just change it). And when Reason fully approves of something, that's what it is for that thing to be maximally good. Thus:

4. THe mind of Reason will be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.

From which it follows:

5. The imperatives of Reason are imperatives an existent omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent mind is issuing.

That mind is, by definition, God. For God is just shorthand for 'an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent mind'.

And from here we pick up the argument I made earlier:

6. If God exists, she would not suffer innocent people to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
7. Therefore (from 5) she has not suffered innocent people to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
8. We are living in ignorance in a dangerous world
9 THerefore we are not innocent

There. Proof that we are in a prison doing time.

Basically, following this idea, our lives are a punishment for a "crime" committed by us, even if we do not understand what that crime is / was, and the act of living is solely to serve out our time here, on this "prison" created by a God to punish us for this crime. This is the purpose of our life. To serve our time. — CountVictorClimacusIII

Yes. There would be three purposes, not one. First, to protect others from us (met any morally perfect people? Exactly. They're not here. This is the land of the depraved). Second, retribution: to give us what we deserve. We would all no doubt have subjected an innocent person to the very risks of harm that we are now running - and so we deserve to face them ourselves (and if you've had kids - well done, you just done gone earned yourself another stretch!). We are being fed our own medicine. And third, rehabilitation - to learn the error of our ways and change them. That's the least important as God, being nice, give us this opportunity, but doesn't really give a rat's arse whether we do or not, as we're loathsome to her.

we instead have been designed for a purpose, that purpose being to serve our time in this prison. Therefore we are like the knife, made for cutting things. — CountVictorClimacusIII

No, I never said that. Indeed, I said the opposite: the idea that a good omnipotent person would create us for the purpose of punishing us is absurd. We - we - have not been designed.

But what do you do with arseholes that you haven't created and that threaten good people? Destroy them? Perhaps, but you're good and would rather not. So you put them somewhere else. You put them, to quote Empodocles, 'away from the abodes of the blessed'. You put them here. You make them wear mortal clothes.

The world - this world - and our career in it is the knife. Not us.

Also, God may not have actually created us. Yet, punishes us anyway? We must have really pissed the old man off... — CountVictorClimacusIII

Not 'may'. 'Did not' create us. I was clear. I said God did not create us. I said there is a tradition of thinking he has, but no evidence and plenty that he hasn't. I couldn't have been clearer. Only an arsehole would create us to punish us. God is not an arsehole. Therefore he has not created us. The logic is impeccable, the conclusion unpleasant. And yes, we have really pissed him off.

Now, let's assume that indeed this world and our lives are a prison cell. We can't escape it. Surely, we can attempt to alleviate our time spent in the cell then? — CountVictorClimacusIII

Yes. One way is to realize you deserve all you get. Easier to do your time - easier to take your licks - if you recognise that you deserve it all. However, only those who undertake to listen to Reason - that is, to God - will be afforded this luxury. The rest will languish here feeling sorry for themselves and wondering why bad things are happening to thjem and why the world is soooo unfair and helping themselves to every self-aggranising view on the market. Ooo, I am made to suffer so I can come closer to God; GOd loves me soooo much he's made me suffer. What a shower of idiots! Hell, I want them to suffer too - don't you? The fools.

And note that unlike Douglas Adams's thought experiment, this theory is demonstrably true, not just a comedian's flight of fancy. If you think it isn't true, dispute a premise.

No, you don't understand omnipotence. An omnipotent being is not bound by the law of non-contradiction - they are the author of it! Thus they can do anything. That doesn't mean they've done anything at all. The law of non-contradiction is true. It just doesn't have to be.

Anyway, you're profoundly confused about the nature of omnipotence and your proof of God does not work for reasons I have already explained to you.

If we have been created to suffer, and there is no overarching meaning to this life, then it's up to us to create our own meaning and purpose to our lives, thereby reducing our own suffering as much as we can through our own actions. Obviously, within the constraints of what's possible given our circumstances (each being unique to our own place in history and the society we grow into). — CountVictorClimacusIII

We have not been 'created' to suffer - why would an omnibenevolent being do such a thing? They wouldn't. The idea makes no sense. So we are not God's creations. God exists. We exist. No contradiction there. But if you suppose God created us, then that's perverse and makes no sense. There is a long tradition of thinking God created us, but there's no evidence he did and plenty that he didn't, not least the fact we're not perfect and the fact we have free will and the fact we're being punished (what kind of bastard would create us for the purpose of punishing us??).

There 'is' a purpose to this life: the purpose our living it serves is it gives us our comeuppence. That's a purpose. It's serving it.

You can't create your own purpose for your life. You didn't bring yourself into existence here or make this place. So how on earth can you give your life here a purpose? You are confusing your own purposes with the purpose for which you are living here. Your purposes are too late to the purpose party. In order for your purposes here to be the purpose for which you are being subjected to a life here, your purposes - the ones you formed here - would have had to have been causally responsible for you living here, which as a moment's reflection should tell you is manifestly impossible, for what is later does not cause that which is earlier.

A knife has been made for the purpose of cutting things, and it that's not going to change if the knife has other ideas.

And as for 'rebelling' - well, rebel or don't rebel, it'll make no difference to why you're here. And you can try to escape, but what would be the point of that? This is God's prison; you can't escape.

Then we can perhaps agree that God is not omnibenevolent. — CountVictorClimacusIII

We can't do that, for God is by definition omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. That is, it is just what the word denotes: a person who has those properties is 'God' just as a man who has never had a wife is a bachelor. 4, in other words, just asserts that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being.

Furthermore, if a person is omnipotent, then she will also be omnibenevolent, or at least it is beyond a reasonable doubt that they will be (for the person will be Reason and she will approve of herself and 'being approved of by Reason' is what being omnibenevolent consists of). The same is true where omniscience is concerned (for if one does not know everything, then one will lack some powers; knowledge is power, as they say). They come as a package, then.

Finally, we are trying to find out what the purpose of our lives here may be, yes? So we should not start out by assuming that we know already and then adjusting the premises of an argument until it yields what we want. Anyone who does that is engaged in a pointless exercise, for they are trying to find the answer to a question that they already insist they know the answer to.

What I have done is demonstrate what the purpose of our lives here is if an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being exists. It's not a test or an attempt to seduce us. It's a punishment.

Perhaps no such person exists. But they do - premise 4 is true - and this can be rationally demonstrated. And certainly no reasonable person can reject premise 4 on the grounds that they do not like the conclusion that 4 yields. For not liking a conclusion is not evidence the conclusion is false.

Anyway, imagine you wake one morning with no memories of the day before. But you are lying on a bed and you are covered in bandages and there are tubes and wires coming out of you and monitors around you making beeping noises. You find as well that you are barely able to move and that there are others in beds around you in a similar situation. You ask others how you got to be in this situation, but all they can tell you is that you came through the double doors at the end of the room, which doesn't really answer your question.

What is it reasonable for you to believe? Surely that you are a patient in a hospital and something has gone seriously wrong with your health. It would be odd - indeed, rationally perverse - to conclude that someone is head over heals in love with you and to express this covered you with bandages and hooked you up to various machines and restricted your movement and put you in a ward without them, but with a lot of other people with whom they are also madly in love. I mean, there's just no reasonable route to that conclusion - it's potty. And it becomes even more potty if one supposes in addition that your lover is omnipotent and omniscient!


Obviously we're not in that situation, but our situation is relevantly similar. We have awoken in ignorance in a dangerous world. If we ask others why we are here, the most they can tell us from their experience is that we fell out of that woman over there some time ago. But that's not really what we want to know.

What's the reasonable conclusion for us to draw about our situation if we know that God exists? That God loves us and he's somehow trying to express it by making us living in ignorance in a dangerous world? That seems potty. No, we're in a prison. We may not know precisely why, but we are and we're not loved, we're hated, and nothing that happens to us is undeserved. Not a particularly pleasant conclusion - though one that will, if taken seriously, make one much more psychologically robust - but there it is.

Reminds me of a line of dialogue from one of Terrance Malick's more recent films (Knight of Cups): "If you are unhappy, you shouldn't take it as a sign of God's disfavor. Just the contrary. Might be the very sign He loves you. He shows His love not by helping avoid suffering, but by sending you suffering, by keeping you there. To suffer binds you to something higher than yourself, higher than your own will. Takes you from the world to find what lies beyond it." — CountVictorClimacusIII

I have not seen the film as he seems to have gone up his own fundament since Badlands. But I find the view expressed in the quotes to be the opposite of what is the case. If you are unhappy, you most certainly should take it as a sign of God's disfavor, for that's precisely what it is. Why else would he let you be unhappy? He can make you happy with ease, and so that's exactly what he'd do if he liked you. So he doesn't like you. He doesn't love you at all. Loathes, not loves.

"To suffer binds you to something higher than yourself, higher than your own will. Takes you from the world to find what lies beyond it."

God's omnipotent so if he wanted you to be bound to something higher than yourself, he could make that happen just like that without visiting any suffering on you at all. To think otherwise is to think God can't do things - but he can do anything. So, even if suffering can have beneficial consequences for its victim, these two facts remain: a) God could have given you the benefit 'without' the suffering and b) God wants you to suffer, not for the benefits, but for its own sake, for otherwise why are you suffering? If God exists and you're suffering, you can know that God wants you to suffer what you're suffering and that it's not the act of a parent keen to teach his offspring a difficult lesson, but the act of a retributivist who wants you to get your comeuppence (and get it you are).

perhaps the suffering we experience, or this life in general is some sort of test. — CountVictorClimacusIII

That cannot be so. For God knows everything, so what does he need to test us for? What does he need to find out that he doesn't already know? There is nothing he does not know, and thus no purpose to any test. God is not, then, testing us. Plus what if I want to know for how long a child can stand on hot coals? Am I good person if, to satisfy my curiousity, I place an innocent child on hot coals? Clearly not. Well, then a fortiori God would not do such a terrible thing. We are not being tested and we can be as sure of that as we can that being good does not involve being a callous sadist.

Perhaps God is asking us what makes us worthy of his love? Like a parent pushing his child to be all they can be, to strive towards the apex of their own innate human potential to be all they can be. — CountVictorClimacusIII

Again, that would make God a total arsehole. God hates us. Not loves us. Hates us. God doesn't want us to love him or want to make us go through this or that ordeal so that we might somehow come to love him - that sounds like an incredibly abusive relationship, a 'treat-em mean, keep em-keen' mentality that it is insulting to attribute to an all-good person. God is not trying to foster a relationship with us; he's ending one. This - this here, this life - is what happens when you break up with God. God's dumped you. And now he's cutting-up your wardrobe and slashing your tires.

It's incoherent. Adams was not, of course, a serious thinker. But anyway, if we can apply a bit of rigor to his humour-prioritizing thought experiment, then what's he asking us to think really doesn't make sense.

For instance:

the omnipotent God annihilated himself in the Big Bang to become the Universe. — CountVictorClimacusIII

If he became the universe, then he would not have annihilated himself but transformed himself.

And similarly:

Why? Because God already knew everything possible except what would be due to his own lack of existence. Therefore, He would need to end it in order to complete his knowledge. — CountVictorClimacusIII

God knows 'everything'. Not some things. Everything. So that would include knowledge of all true counterfactuals, such as "x would be the case if I did not exist" etc. Thus he would not need to do anything to complete his knowledge. Again, an omniscient being does not have incomplete knowledge. And an omnipotent being does not 'need' to do anything. The idea that God, to achieve X, would 'need' to do Y, assumes that there are laws that apply to and constrain God. But that's a contradiction, for nothing constrains an omnipotent being. So Adams is simply trading on the fact that most people don't fully understand just what being omnipotent involves.

What are your thoughts on this idea? Are we born from a negation - God's denial of Himself and his subsequent self-annihilation? — CountVictorClimacusIII

The idea makes no sense at all. Not even a tiny bit.

This is a prison and we're being punished. That's the truth, a truth easily discoverable by reasoned reflection.

An omnipotent being can do anything. And as such God can bestow any benefit on us he wants. And there is no harm so firmly bonded to any benefit that God could not have given us the benefit without the harm. And an omnipotent omnibenevolent being would give innocent beings all the benefits they could - so, all the benefits - without any harms.

Yet here we are, living in ignorance in a dangerous world. What follows? What follows from these two facts:

1. If God exists, he would not suffer innocent people to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
2. We are living in ignorance in a dangerous world?

This:

3. Therefore, if God exists, we are not innocent

And as

4. God exists

This follows:

5. We are not innocent

The purpose for which we are living lives here, then, is not to facilitate God's quest for knowledge, but to satisfy God's desire that we suffer. Simple.

You are confused. You do not understand omnipotence and thus do not grasp the concept of God.
God can do anything. A being who can create himself is more powerful than one who can't. So you are profoundly confused if you identify omnipotence with the latter and not the former.

You have just ignored entirely the argument I gave.

Answer the question: can an omnipotent being make anything perfect?

Do you accept that an omnipotent being can make anything perfect if he so wishes? If so, then you acknowledge that a perfect being, qua perfect, does not 'have'to have any particular attribute. And thus you cannot, from God's perfection, conclude that God exists.

One can make the point another way. God does not have to be perfect. For the concept of God is the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being. Whether having those properties makes one perfect is a matter an omnipotent being would have control over - and so it would be beyond a reasonable doubt that they would be - but still, it would remain possible for God to be God and not be perfect and for a perfect being not to be God, and thus once more you cannot get from a perfect being's existence to God's existence.

Do you accept that an omnipotent being does not exist of necessity, but contingently? Reflection on the concept of omnipotence reveals this - for being able to do anything includes being able to destroy oneself - and so someone who denies it is not really thinking of God.

But if you acknowledge that God exists contingently, then it is hard to see how you can get from the concept of God to his reality.

God's omnipotence is going to block your path everytime. For in effect ontological arguments are attempts to show that God 'must' exist. But that is to suppose that reality forces existence upon God - that there is some supreme law of laws that determines his existence and that you are trying to uncover - which of course it does not do, for the order of dependence is the other way around. God does not 'have' to do anything, as reflection on the concept reveals. And there is no law that God is subject to. All laws are subject to God, not God to them. And thus understanding God means understanding the hopelessness of trying to show otherwise.

Ontological arguments are not doomed to fail in all cases, or indeed any case but God's (ironically). We are not omnipotent and so that is why we can conclude that we ourselves 'must' exist if we have the idea of ourselves (and thus that the idea of one's self is one that we can conclude has something answering to it). But even the cogito fails in God's case. That is, there is one being who does not have to conclude he exists if he has the idea of himself: God. For once more, God can do anything. And so though you and I must conclude we exist if we think of our selves, God does not have to.

Er, I have. As should be blindingly obvious to anyone else who has. So, just to be clear Timbo, you think the cogito is irrelevant to his later divine ontological argument do you? Is that what you think?

No, the point is that it's challenging the idea that it is better to exist than not to exist, since we naturally think that such a devil would be worse if it existed. — Amalac

If it works, then a maximally bad being would exist. That's what it would establish. And so it wouldn't challenge the idea that a maximally good being exists. Existence makes a good thing better, and a worse thing worse.

But an omnipotent and omniscient being will also be omnibenevolent
— Bartricks

How do you know that? Can you prove this claim? — Amalac

I know it because I can prove it (in the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' sense of that term). There is only one way in which a being can be omnipotent: the being in question must be the arbiter of the norms of Reason, for otherwise they will be constrained by them, and only a being unconstrained by such norms can do anything and everything. Thus an omnipotent being will be the author of the norms of Reason - she will be Reason, that is - and as such she will also be the arbiter of good and bad, for what it is for something to be good is for it to be approved of by Reason, and what it is for something to be bad is for it to be disapproved of by Reason. Thus, an omnibenevolent being is a being who is fully approved of by Reason. Reason will fully approve of herself, for she is omnipotent and so if there was any aspect of her she disapproved of, she could change it. Thus it is beyond a reasonable doubt that an omnipotent being will also be omnibenevolent.

The devil's corollary does not work for two reasons. First, if it works it does not show that the ontological argument for God does not work, it just establishes the devil's existence as well. Second, it does not work, for to make the being maximally bad one would have to suppose it omnipotent and omniscient. But an omnipotent and omniscient being will also be omnibenevolent, and thus in trying to conceive of a maximally bad being one will end up with its opposite: God.

Not quite. What you get is a thinking being exists. — tim wood

No, the thought of my self - so, the idea of my self - is an idea that cannot be entertained absent the existence of the self in question. And thus it is an idea that, if you have it, you can know has something answering to it. Thus you can know that you exist. Not jsut someone. You.

Descartes' point - later on - is that the idea of God is like this too. So the cogito is an ontological argument par excellence and sets the stage for the divine ontological argument that follows.

Those who seek to dismiss ontological argumetns for God by dismissing all ontological arguments are on a hiding to nothing.

Take the cogito. That's an ontological argument. Not for God, but for you. From the idea of your self you can conclude that you exist. The idea of my self could not exist absent me, thus if I have the idea of my self, I exist.

Anyone who seeks to dismiss all ontological arguments is, then, misguided from the get go. For some of them - such as that one - clearly work. I really can conclude that I exist from my possession of the idea of my self.

Obviously there are lots of ideas for which this does not work. THe idea of an apple, for instance. Nothing in the idea of an apple seems to entail that the apple exists. And if we make the idea more complex, such as the idea of an existent apple, then though one cannot entertain that idea without taking the apple to exist - for it is the idea of an existent apple - nevertheless the idea of existence can be separated from the idea of the apple.

The question, then, is whether idea of God - that is, the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being - is more akin to the idea of the self, or more akin to the idea of an apple.

In case one wonders how it can be that there can be more than one way to be perfect, consider that an omnipotent being can do anything. And so that must include being able to bestow perfection on anything. That is, God can make anything perfect if he so wills it. And God is not constrained to consider himself and himself alone perfect, for God is not in any way constrained (he would not be omnipotent if he were). Thus, if an omnipotent being exists, there are as many ways to be perfect as the omnipotent being allows. And as such even though the omnipotent being would itself be perfect - or so we can reasonably conclude, given that it stands to reason that an omnipotent being would consider itself perfect and thus be so - we cannot conclude from its possession of this property that it exists, for nothing in the idea of perfection entails existence. If it did, then the omnipotent being would be constrained to exist, and in that case the omnipotent being would not be omnipotent. And furthermore, the omnipotent being would be constrained to consider perfect only those things that exist, which once more is incompatible with being omnipotent.

Though I believe God exists and that his existence can be demonstrated, there's an air of sophistry about this sort of ontological argument.

I think what we have here is the conflation of two distinct ideas that overlap. The idea of God is the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being. Such a being will be perfect. But it does not follow that a perfect being is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. So, God is perfect, but there can be perfect beings who do not qualify as God. If that is correct, then the idea of God as an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being is not equivalent to the idea of a perfect being. The category of perfect being is larger than the category of omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being.

This is important, it seems to me, in undermining your argument (though perhaps not decisively). For what your case seems to depend on, is the idea that existence is a perfection. But even if that is true - and I am not sure it is - that would not show that God exists, rather all it would show is that one way to be perfect includes existing.

If instead we focus on the idea of God - not the more expansive category of perfect being - there seems nothing in the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being that essentially involves existence. Someone who wonders if that idea of God has anything answering to it in reality is not confused, even if careful reasoning will reveal that a definitive 'yes' answer can be given to it. And so there seems nothing in the bare idea of God that forces one to acknowledge his existence. Or so it seems to me.

Indeed, it seems to me that reflection on the idea of God reveals that if God exists, God exists contingently and not of necessity. For the idea of God is the idea of a person who can do anything. And a person who can do anything can destroy themselves. Thus such a person does not exist of necessity, but contingently. That is, if they exist, it is possible for them not to. Doesn't that show that the idea of existing is not contained in the idea of God? For if it were, then we would have a contradictory idea on our hands, for it would be the idea of a being who both must exist, and does not have to exist.

You misunderstood his third Meditation. He had two arguments for God — Gregory

Er, yes. I know. You were talking about his ontological argument. So I pointed out how you'd misunderstood it. How does the fact he had two arguments show that I was confused?? Only someone intellectually challenged could think such a thing.

Prove that Descartes meant this then — Gregory

I did. You could read Descartes and then you'd know. You'd know Descartes thought God could do anything. You'd know that 'anything' includes destroying himself. And so you'd know that therefore the person of God does not 'have' to exist, anymore than the person of a bachelor 'has' to lack a wife.

'Prove it!' the clarion call of the idiot.

That is the argument in the 4th meditation. In the 3rd one who says the idea of God is so perfect that we can't have an idea of it without it existing. It goes from self-referencing thoughts to God. That is the foundation of the latter argument — Gregory

Why are you doing this? Is it not yet apparent to you that you're talking to someone who knows Descartes well and understands him far better than you do? You're like a parrot, just squawking things without understanding.

I don't accept it as proof because I believe the senses are more reliable than intellect. — Gregory

On what basis? Either it is clear to you that there is reason to think that the senses are more reliable than the intellect, in which case you are relying on your intellect and demonstrate only that your intellect is not very great; or you think there is no reason whatsoever to think the senses are more reliable than the intellect, but believe it anyway. In which case you are just asserting things and not providing any evidence in support of them.

So, as ever, your position is confused. But you'd have to be better at reasoning than you are in order to be able to realize this and do something about it.

perhaps don't understand God yet, so maybe your not at the place to discuss the Trinity. You think you know everything. — Gregory

So, er, just to be clear: despite having nothing remotely coherent to say about the trinity and despite confidently getting Descartes wrong at every turn - even down to the number of meditations - you 'still' think you're the one in the know and I'm the ignorant one? I know more than you about these things - demonstrably. That is not equivalent to knowing everything. It is only because you overestimate what you know that you think it is.

And once more, you don't understand Descartes' ontological argument. Bachelors necessarily lack wives. That does not mean that if you're a bachelor your lack of wife is a necessary feature of you such taht you are incapable of having one. It means, rather, that the absence of a wife is essential to the idea of a bachelor, and thus to entertain the idea of a bachelor is to entertain the idea of a wifeless man. Similarly, when Descartes says that God exists of necessity, he means that existence is essential to the idea of God, and can no more be separated from it than the idea of a lacking a wife can be taken away from the idea of a bachelor. He does not mean that the person of God lacks the power not to exist. That would, once more, be like thinking that because bachelors necessarily lack a wife, the person of a bachelor is incapable of acquiring a wife. So, 'God exists of necessity' should be understood de dicto, not de re.

If you knew your Descartes, you'd know that held to my (and Jesus') view of omnipotence - namely that it involves being able to do absolutely anything at all, without any restriction from logic. And if you could reason in a straight line then you'd know that he cannot think that God is incapable of taking himself out of existence, for that would be a restriction. Thus God is, by virtue of being omnipotent, capable of destroying himself. And thus his existence is contingent, not necessary. But the idea of God contains the idea of existence and thus to entertain the idea of God with understanding is to understand that God exists (not, note, an argument I endorse - I am a fan of Descartes, but that doesn't mean I endorse every argument he ever made).

As for the Aquinas quote - not sure what work you want it to do.

Yes and got a 1330 on the SAT — Gregory

I have no idea what that means. But well done you! Who's a good boy!!

False. A teacher can sense where a student is going without going by the students exact words for example — Gregory

Okay - so in your mind Descartes is the pupil and you're the teacher. Well, you did do 1330 sitting down.

And which was the first one you understood?
— Bartricks

Every word — Gregory

The first philosophy book you understood was every word? Hmm.

That's not what I said. I said you wrote some nauseating things about love. You seem to have serious difficulty respecting what people actually say. Maybe you should stick to reading people's actual words and not deciding in advance that you understand them already.
— Bartricks

And then you said in contradiction:

Why on earth do you think God loves you? Odd. You live in ignorance in a dangerous world - you think someone who loves you would do that to you? What a remarkable but horribly self serving lack of insight you show. When someone gives you the bird, do you think they're telling you you're no. 1 or something?
— Bartricks

And then:

How is that an explanation? How is it anything? It's just a kind of woolly nothing. Are you saying that there are three distinct people - three separate minds - who love each other? How are they all one mind, then? And how does simplicity have anything to do with this?
— Bartricks

You don't want to learn. That is why I asked if you were in high school — Gregory

There's nothing contradictory about anything in any of those quotes from me. Or is this a case of you - the teacher - knowing where his pupil - me - was going? Even if I didn't actually say anything contradictory, you know that I meant something contradictory?

You think you can teach me anything? So far I've learnt from you that Descartes thought he was God (he didn't), that he published his famous 5 meditations in 1642 (it was 6 meditations and it was published in 1641) and that the French edition came out in 1642 (it came out in 1647), and that you have a special 6th Cartesian sense that allows you to know what Descartes meant regardless of the words dummy Descartes used to express himself.

And you still haven't provided me with any kind of explanation of how divine simplicity does anything whatsoever to dispel concerns about the coherence of the trinity.

No. Did you attend one?

Why don't you read what I actually said?

There are different ways to be perfect.

One way involves knowing everything.

Another way doesn't.

See?

I don't see how you cannot believe you are a person of flesh and bones — Gregory

Well there's a lot you don't see. Perhaps if you tried to follow an argument and respected reason more you'd see. Or you could try reading Descartes.

I don't see how you can possibly have gotten this:

but Descartes ultimate escape from doubt was the ontological argument which he presented in a form which made his non-local mind (as he believed) into the deity. — Gregory

from reading Descartes. I suppose if you've arrogantly allowed yourself the luxury of ignoring what he atctually said -

you have to understand how Descartes really thought, not just what his words say — Gregory

- then you can get anything you jolly well like from it.

The Meditations was the first philosophy book I ever read — Gregory

And which was the first one you understood?

Divine love is nauseating? Maybe — Gregory

That's not what I said. I said you wrote some nauseating things about love. You seem to have serious difficulty respecting what people actually say. Maybe you should try reading people's actual words and not deciding in advance that you understand them already.

Why on earth do you think God loves you? Odd. You live in ignorance in a dangerous world - you think someone who loves you would do that to you? What a remarkable but horribly self serving lack of insight you show. When someone gives you the bird, do you think they're telling you you're no. 1 or something?

Anyway, I am still waiting for an explanation of how God's simplicity in composition explains the trinity. You say this:

But Deism leads to atheism while the Trinity as an idea can withstand doubts. If someone believes in God it is most natural to believe God didn't just love himself for all eternity but is, instead, a family of persons in complete simplicity. — Gregory

How is that an explanation? How is it anything? It's just a kind of woolly nothing. Are you saying that there are three distinct people - three separate minds - who love each other? How are they all one mind, then? And how does simplicity have anything to do with this?

And just to recap:

You said (with that bizarre confidence that infects the ignorant) that Descartes published his Meditations in 1642.

It was 1641.

You then said you meant he wrote it in 1641 and published it the following year.

He didn't. He wrote it over many years and published it in 1641.

You then said you meant the French edition.

That wasn't published in 1642 either. It was published in 1647. (There were different editions printed, as Gassendi took exception to his objections - and Descartes' withering replies - being published, and so Descartes decided to take them out of subsequent editions replacing them with some contemptuous comments on a book of counter-criticisms that Gassendi wrote but that Descartes considered unworthy of his time...Descartes' comments being based on what friends of his who had taken the trouble to read the book had reported back to him about it).

You also described it as '5' meditations. It is 6.

You also decided that what Descartes actually wrote isn't important - it's understanding what he meant that is important, and you think you have some special insight into that.

So, let's be clear: you've been confidently wrong about Descartes on just about every single point. Yet you're still confident you know your stuff. It never ceases to amaze me!

No, the French version was 1647, not er, 1942. And your version only has 5 meditations??

1641. Not 1642. (And you try and cover up your mistake by saying he wrote it in 1641 and published it the following year - Haha, er, no. It was published in 1641, not 1642. And it was the product of many years work - he wrote it very slowly - he didn't bang it out in a year). And to make matters worse hou get the number of meditations wrong too - it is 6, not 5! You don't know your Descartes. You clearly don't understand him - I mean, you don't grasp the meaning of most of my posts and attribute to me views not found in anything I've written, so we can expect you to do the same with D too....and you have. At no point does he confuse God with himself - he explains in detail why he is not God. Did you miss that bit? He's doubting, yes? An omniscient being wouldn't doubt. So he can know he's not God. Sheesh.
Anyway, you still - still - have not provided any argument to show how being a simple entity somehow explains the trinity. You just said some confused and nauseating things about love.

So just to recap: you don't know your Descartes (for everything you have said about him is wrong, from publication dates to number of meditations to substantial philosophical content - and you don't have any argument for anything and you are a christian who is actually a confused Buddhist. Good job!!

1642? I don't think you know your Descartes. I don't know what a 'dissociative' problem is, but whatever it may be I fail to see its relevance.
I have no reason to think she has divested herself of power, for I have every reason to think reasons exist. And reasons cannot exist absent her. And so long as she is the source of all reasons then she is omnipotent. Now that argument was, of course, completely wasted on you. All of this is, isn't it?

You have said nothing to address the issue.
I have explained in plain English why God can divest himself of his power - he can do anything and that includes that, obviously. That doesn't mean he ever has, just that he could. A being who could not divest themselves of something they had would not be able to do anything, would they?!?
It has nothing to do with love. It's just the logical implication of omnipotence.
The rest is just gibberish so far as I can tell. And Descartes did not mistake himself for God, which you'd know if you read him.

So, I asked you to explain how being a simple entity does anything to explain the trinity.

And your response?

Because we are en-souled bodies, soul forming the matter into the form human eye can see. We are in a social system on earth, where we relate to other beings. That is how consciousness works. It can't be outside the world unless you are God and God is bound by the law of love. — Gregory

Oh, thanks. Now I see. All crystal clear now. Cleary cleary clearingtons.

Your idea, which you have no arguments for, is that God is bound by nothing and can annihilate himself. — Gregory

I do have an argument. Reason is not bound by the laws of reason for they are her laws and thus do not bind her. Reason is a person (for only a person can issue edicts or prescriptions or what have you, and the laws of Reason are edicts or prescriptions or what have you). And that person, becusae she is not bound by the laws of Reason, will be able to do anything. As being able to do anything includes being able to destroy oneself, she can destroy herself. (And no, she is not bound by laws that are herself, for as well as not making any sense - she's not a set of laws! - if it did make sense, it would make sense by virtue of conforming to a law of Reason, a law that it is in her gift to undo......thus, once more, she is in no way bound by anything or anyone).

Anyway, i think we are talking past one another, for I mean by an argument a set of premises that entail or at least provide some support for a conclusion. Whereas I think you must mean by an argument 'a set of nonsense or vacuous phrases put together in no particular order'.

You believe you are nowhere — Gregory

Yes. Minds don't have spatial locations. Material things have spatial locations. For that's the nature of a material thing - a material thing is something that is extended in space. Thus, they have spatial locations.

Minds are not material entities, and thus they do not have spatial locations. They exist, but they do not have a spatial location.

My mind - and God's mind - do have temporal locations. Anything that exists exists 'now'. And 'now' is a temporal location. So they do exist 'somewhere' temporally - they exist 'now' (but that's kind of contained in the meaning of exists). But they do not exist in a spatial location, because they're not material objects.

Then mustn't you believe than that you have a body? — Gregory

I do believe I have a body. I 'have' a body. I am not a body. I have one. I am not one. I have a shirt. I am not a shirt. I have a house. I am not a house. I have a book. I am not a book. I have a body. I am not a body. See? Having a body and being one are not the same.

I'm not trying to play therapist, but your position sounds very very strange especially when you factor in that you throw an insult into all you posts — Gregory

Then you reveal your ignorance, as my position is not remotely strange - most of the great philosophers held the same view. That is, they held that their minds were immaterial entities that lack locations and that there is a god - God. And some of them - especially Descartes - would think nothing of insulting those who deserved it.

but have a super-powerful (maybe today totally powerless) alien watching over you. — Gregory

I didn't say that, did I? God exists. But God is not powerless, but all powerful. And I don't think he's "watching over me" - where did I say he was? I don't think he gives much of a toss about me or you. Why would he?

What this example demonstrates is that these concepts can all be constructed from the same mind, not that they can BE the same mind - mind being the clay, and ‘being’ occurring in time. But I think I follow what you’re trying to say. — Possibility

No, that's not what it demonstrates (for what you've said makes no sense). What it demonstrates is that one and the same object can have radically different properties at different times. And this is as true of minds as it is of anything else. The clay, when it is cuboid, has the property of being cuboid. The clay, when it is spherical, has the property of being spherical. The clay, when it is pyramidical, has the property of being pyramidical. It's the same clay, it just had different properties.

I am the same person I was a moment ago when I was thinking something quite different to what I am thinking right now.

God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. Those are properties of the mind of God. But the mind of God could lose them - could become less than omnipotent, omniscient or omnibenevolent - and still be the same mind, the same person.

This is important becasue I take it that one problem people have is understanding how Jesus and God could be the same person, yet Jesus not know things God knows. The above explains how that's entirely possible. God knows everything, but it does not follow that if Jesus is the same person as God that Jesus knows everything (just as a cuboid has four corners, but it does not follow that if the sphere is the same clay as the cuboid that it has four corners).

Thus, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit could have mutually incompatible properties yet still be one and the same person. They could not have those properties at the same time, admittedly. But so what? Like I say, I am not a christian and so I do not know whether they need to or not or what scriptural support any of this has. I am simply showing how it can be that God could know things Jesus doesn't know and yet God and Jesus could be one and the same person.

Okay, this one is about perceived potential, which gets us away from the temporal issue and allows for simultaneity. — Possibility

Notice how your language has changed here from ‘can be’ to ‘could be’. — Possibility

What? I was offering a different way in which one and the same object might answer to three quite different descriptions at the same time. Why do you think you need to point anything out to me? Am I incorrect? Does 'The David' and 'A sculpture by Michelangelo made to adorn the front of the Duomo' and 'the biggest lump of marble in Florence' not refer to one and the same thing? They do.

I was showing how rich the resources were to deal with what others too quickly dismiss as incoherent.

So, for all your ‘solid’ examples, you should acknowledge that all you have available to build on are shared qualities of human experience in relation to ideas. — Possibility

I have literally no idea what you're on about. If you had a cogent criticism you'd make it, but this is just fog.

Here you may need to clarify: are you discussing ‘God’ as a being, as a concept, or as an idea? — Possibility

The word 'concept' and the word 'idea' are synonyms. And God is not a concept (or idea, if you prefer). That's a category error. God is a person. A mind.

The idea of Bartricks is not Bartricks. I am Bartricks. A person. A mind. I am not an idea, even though you have an idea 'of' me. Ideas - concepts - are 'of' things. The things they are of are not themselves ideas unless, that is, we are talking about the idea of an idea.

The Trinity explains how God has an equal (two actually) to love. Otherwise a simple God would be a supreme king like Allah instead of pure activity like in the Trinity. Even Aristotle called God pure act — Gregory

Er, what are you on? Explain how God's being a simple entity does anything to explain the trinity.

Souls exist in the world. This is what phenomenology proves. God doesn't have a location because he is MORE simple than a soul. He is on another realm of divinity, above spiritual essence. You haven't provided any arguments against this — Gregory

Like I said, argue something.

We have minds.

Minds are simple objects.

Why?

They're indivisible. Half a mind makes no sense.

If they were divisible, they'd have parts and then they'd not be simple.

They're not divisible, therefore they're simple.

They don't occupy space. Why? Becuase they're simple. If they occupied space they'd be divisible and then they wouldn't be simple. But they are simple and thus they do not occupy space.

Your body occupies space if anything does. But all that means is that your mind is not your body.

God is a mind. So God is simple and God also does not occupy space.

Those are called 'arguments'.