tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post250261731033186633..comments2023-12-21T06:35:36.624-05:00Comments on Recursivity: Mark Shea Thinks Scientists Are Stupid, Makes GaffeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-71823886821773818522008-08-16T11:35:00.000-04:002008-08-16T11:35:00.000-04:00Larry, you started off so well but you don't seem ...Larry, you started off so well but you don't seem to understand that 'not necessarily' is a lot different from 'not'. For example, the premise<BR/><BR/>P1. If a person is of Jewish descent, then he is not necessarily of English descent.<BR/><BR/>is a lot different from the premise<BR/><BR/>P2. If a person is of Jewish descent, then he is not of English descent.<BR/><BR/>The mistake you are making is thinking that P1 is equivalent to P2. It is not. Given P1, a person of Jewish descent could still be of English descent, though not necessarily, which is the case for me. Since my mother is of Jewish decent and my father is of English descent, P1 is true for me and P2 is false. Your contention that my argument is 'strong enough to show that God could not have been Jesus' is simply false, for the same reason pointed out above. This should be patently obvious to a person who believes they are knowledgeable enough to pronounce arguments as 'really silly' and who suggests that his fellow discussant 'misunderstands pretty much all of its key concepts.' <BR/><BR/>You are also mistaken when you state that my argument was 'too strong' ('too strong' and 'really silly' …. hmmmmm.). The argument is not making a strong inference at all; it is simply a defense against 336's claim that a maximally great being must be everything, including a tomato plant. The argument simply concludes that it is not necessarily so. That is certainly not 'too strong'. Concluding that Jesus is not necessarily God, or that I am not necessarily English says nothing about whether or not Jesus actually is God, or whether I am actually of English descent. Please tell me that you see this and that I am not 'talking to a brick wall.'<BR/><BR/>You wrote, "<I>you tell me that the most excellent of all possible sequences of events was for God to play with a Jesus-shaped puppet, let the puppet die, and then resurrect it immaterially to live forever.</I>" <BR/><BR/>If you will review what I wrote, you will see that I said no such thing. You have misrepresented what I said, and that is dishonest. There is a very large difference between 'becoming a human' and to 'play with a Jesus-shaped puppet'. Dishonestly misrepresenting what a person says and then claiming you are 'talking to a brick wall' is a sign of a person who seems to be flailing around.Kirk Durstonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00678032887521146961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-84893239304710314272008-08-16T01:21:00.000-04:002008-08-16T01:21:00.000-04:00Just a quick rundown, and then I'm done with this:...Just a quick rundown, and then I'm done with this: I didn't really think your argument disproved Christianity, mostly because it's a really silly argument that misunderstands pretty much all of its key concepts; rather, the point was that it was too strong for you to use to defend Christianity because, if it works, it works in the case of Jesus as well, because it's strong enough to show that God could not have been Jesus; in attempting to reconcile this, you tell me that the most excellent of all possible sequences of events was for God to play with a Jesus-shaped puppet, let the puppet die, and then resurrect it immaterially to live forever. If that's your story, you can have it - I can tell when I'm talking to a brick wall.Elihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03543293341085230171noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-29942145966439274602008-08-15T18:01:00.000-04:002008-08-15T18:01:00.000-04:00Larry, there is no 'flailing around'. I simply poi...Larry, there is no 'flailing around'. I simply pointed out that your conclusion that 'God couldn't have been Jesus in any way, shape, or form' does not follow from the improved version of the argument in my last post, nor my initial, argument. So your excitement over the demise of Christianity is not founded.<BR/><BR/>The conclusion that 'Jesus is not necessarily maximally excellent' says nothing about whether he actually is or not. Therefore, it says nothing about whether Jesus is or is not God. The same goes for tomato plants. Recall that all I had to do to respond to 386's suggestion that maximal greatness meant that God had to be, among other things, a tomato plant, was to argue that such is not necessarily so. <BR/><BR/>I do not see a problem with a maximally great being acquiring the additional property of becoming a human, in addition to what He is already. Your suggestion that God would be dead by now is only true if God lost all his other properties and became nothing more than a human. But that is not what Christianity holds. Under Christianity, God retains all His properties and adds an additional property …. becoming a human being. If the human aspect of God dies, then all the other properties still remain. Furthermore, under Christianity, death is not the end of a human being. Some humans will undergo a change of state into an immortal and excellent form. Given this, if God does add the property of 'becoming human' to His other properties, and the human aspect of God dies, it is not necessarily the end of the humanity of God if Jesus did rise from the dead in an immortal and excellent (in his case, maximally excellent) form. Of course, whether this is all actual or not is a different question.Kirk Durstonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00678032887521146961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-12575159377413584152008-08-15T15:13:00.000-04:002008-08-15T15:13:00.000-04:00Oh, this is so sad, seeing you flail around like t...Oh, this is so sad, seeing you flail around like this. You agree that "Jesus is not necessarily maximally excellent," Kirk, but somehow then disagree that Jesus could not be God. God, on your definition, is necessarily maximally excellent, so the two clearly cannot be the same, nor one a part of the other (or, if you reject this latter conclusion, you must give another reason as to why tomato plants aren't included in God; if a not-necessarily maximally excellent thing can be part of a necessarily maximally excellent one, then prima facie tomato plants can be part of God). But then again, it doesn't seem like you even believe any of this, because you say that it's central to Christianity that God "become human," which means by any reasonable interpretation of "become human" that, by now, God is dead: no human could possibly have survived for over a thousand years. (It's worthwhile to note, here, that if I wear a hand puppet of a snake, my hand has not become a snake - that, in fact, there is no real snake involved in that process. So while you may try to argue that God didn't become totally human but rather just human enough to be Jesus, what you're really saying is that God stuck part of itself inside a puppet of a human: there is no real human involved, just the appearance of one.) I look forward to your next comment so that you can clarify what it is, exactly, you think you mean.Elihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03543293341085230171noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-73436819950756457682008-08-15T14:52:00.000-04:002008-08-15T14:52:00.000-04:00Well, having got home last night after a week in t...Well, having got home last night after a week in the remote northern Ontario wilderness, I'm now changing gears from focusing on food, shelter and avoiding problems with Black Bears and Cougars to thinking once again about the higher things in life such as philosophy. LarryNiven has technically tuned up my argument and I accept his improvements. The improved argument reads as follows:<BR/><BR/>1. A maximally great being is a maximally excellent being (entailed by maximal greatness)<BR/>2. Some Tomato plants can be diseased (empirical fact)<BR/>3. If some kind of thing can be diseased, that kind of thing is not necessarily maximally excellent.<BR/>4. Tomatoes are not necessarily maximally excellent. (from 2 & 3)<BR/>5. Not everything is necessarily maximally excellent. (from 4 and quantifier logic)<BR/>5. A maximally great being cannot be both maximally excellent and not-maximally excellent (law of non-contradiction)<BR/>therefore,<BR/>6. A maximally great being is not necessarily everything. (from 1, 5 & 6)"<BR/><BR/>The above argument is not very pretty and can certainly be improved upon, but it does the job for now. <BR/><BR/>Larry then makes the most interesting suggestion that the above argument disproves Christianity, if we grant that Jesus contracted a disease at some point in his life. Since the New Testament documents affirm that Jesus endured the same hardships the rest of us endure, then I'm certainly willing to grant that he contracted one or more of a variety of diseases during the course of his life. <BR/><BR/>Although I accept Larry's technical improvements to my initial argument, Larry's conclusion that 'God couldn't have been Jesus in any way, shape, or form' does not follow from the above argument if we substitute 'Jesus' for tomato plants. The phrase 'not necessarily' is key here. I used 'not necessarily' in my argument intentionally. Premise (4) allows that the state of 'being diseased' might be logically compatible with the state of being 'maximally excellent'. All that follows about Jesus would be found in premise (4) where it would state, 'Jesus is not necessarily maximally excellent.' It would not follow that 'Jesus is not maximally excellent.' The difference between 'not necessarily' and 'not' is critical here. <BR/><BR/>Highly relevant to the discussion is what is entailed by the concept of maximal excellence (that degree of excellence beyond which it is not logically possible to more excellent). Let us say for the sake of argument that <BR/><BR/>A. The only way humanity can be rescued is if a maximally excellent being becomes human (where 'human' includes 'gets diseased', 'gets dirty and needs a shower', etc.).<BR/><BR/>Given (A), which of the following beings are more excellent:<BR/><BR/>Being #1: knows that A is the case, desires to rescue humanity but not wishing to 'get dirty' decides against becoming human, with the result that humanity is not rescued.<BR/><BR/>Being #2: knows that A is the case, desires to rescue humanity, and in spite of becoming dirty becomes human for the purpose of rescuing humanity. (a central premise in Christianity)<BR/><BR/>Of the two beings, it seems to me that Being #2 would be more excellent than Being #1. Ultimately, it seems to me that a maximally excellent being would do everything in such being's power to rescue other beings just so long as whatever 'getting dirty' required was still logically compatible with maximal excellence. Premise (4) allows for cases where certain types of 'getting dirty' may be logically compatible with maximal excellence.Kirk Durstonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00678032887521146961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-8594195687695185842008-08-13T01:21:00.000-04:002008-08-13T01:21:00.000-04:002. Some Tomato plants can be diseased (empirical f...<I>2. Some Tomato plants can be diseased (empirical fact)</I><BR/><BR/>That's okay, they're still maximally excellent. Tomato plants that are diseased are stll maximally excellent. (Just like when "good" has some "bad" in it it's still maximally excellent.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-89419864566281333312008-08-11T12:51:00.000-04:002008-08-11T12:51:00.000-04:00Ta dah! And thus Kirk disproves Christianity:"...Ta dah! And thus Kirk disproves Christianity:<BR/><BR/>"1. A maximally great being is a maximally excellent being (entailed by maximal greatness)<BR/>2. Some Tomato plants can be diseased (empirical fact)<BR/>3. If some Tomato plants can be diseased, then everything is not necessarily maximally excellent. (analytically true)<BR/>4. Everything is not necessarily maximally excellent (from 2 & 3)<BR/>5. A maximally great being cannot be both maximally excellent and not-maximally excellent (law of non-contradiction)<BR/>therefore,<BR/>6. A maximally great being is not necessarily everything. (from 1,4 & 5)"<BR/><BR/>3 is a bit of a leap and 4 is stated wrongly - what he really meant was<BR/><BR/>3a. If some kind of thing can be diseased, that kind of thing is not necessarily maximally excellent. (I take it this is definitional for Kirk)<BR/>3b. Tomatoes are not necessarily maximally excellent. (2 and 3a)<BR/>4'. Not everything is necessarily maximally excellent. (from 3b and quantifier logic - note, Kirk, that this is substantively different from your 4; note, moreover, that 4' actually follows whereas yours doesn't)<BR/><BR/>Sure, Kirk's proof suffices to show that God can't be everything, but it also is strong enough to show that God couldn't be Jesus - just replace "Tomatoes" with "Jesus." Jesus could have been diseased (assuming Jesus existed), so these same premises demonstrate that God couldn't have been Jesus in any way, shape, or form. It follows trivially from this that Christianity is false. Thanks, Kirk!Elihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03543293341085230171noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-58489908423285337342008-08-08T19:37:00.000-04:002008-08-08T19:37:00.000-04:00I don't mind saying I'm enjoying both sides of thi...I don't mind saying I'm enjoying both sides of this discussion thus far, so I hope it continues.John Farrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18280296574996987228noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-33444677700065163152008-08-08T16:30:00.000-04:002008-08-08T16:30:00.000-04:00kirk: Your problem is that you arbitrarily made cr...kirk: <I>Your problem is that you arbitrarily made crows the ultimate standard of blackness without any good argument to support your assertion. I've at least sketched out an argument from maximal greatness to the conclusion that such a being must be the standard of excellence. Where's your argument as to why crows, of all black things, should be the ultimate standard of blackness? You are not even in the game until you come up with a good argument as to why crows should define blackness rather than coal, or the absence of electromagnetic radiation, etc.</I><BR/><BR/>Thank you for acknowledging that you are playing a "game." Since pointing out that what you are doing is question-begging, I am not interested in any further explanations as to why you should be allowed to beg the question, especially when you deny that privilege to others. In the interest of following through with the same maximal excellence you have displayed, I ran a <A HREF="http://www.googlefight.com" REL="nofollow">Googlefight</A> between "black as a crow" and "black as coal." The former won, 117 to 88. I would think that even you had heard of "brown coal." Perhaps I should have written my story with ravens rather than crows, then I could use the fact that raven is a synonym of black. Based on your line of argumentation, that seems like the sort of trivia that might convince you.<BR/><BR/>Regarding my black crow story, I can only apologise to any readers for the lack of imagination in using such an exact analogy of your argument.<BR/><BR/>Bye now, sophistry doesn't hold my interest as it seems to hold yours.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-89002481545814577332008-08-08T12:02:00.000-04:002008-08-08T12:02:00.000-04:00386sx, you do raise an interesting question as to ...386sx, you do raise an interesting question as to what is entailed by the attribute of maximal greatness. I've not thought about your particular criticism before, but as I sit here thinking about it, it seems to me that maximal greatness does not entail that such a being 'is everything'; there could be other entities that are not maximally great. Here is an argument …<BR/><BR/>1. A maximally great being is a maximally excellent being (entailed by maximal greatness)<BR/>2. Some Tomato plants can be diseased (empirical fact)<BR/>3. If some Tomato plants can be diseased, then everything is not necessarily maximally excellent. (analytically true)<BR/>4. Everything is not necessarily maximally excellent (from 2 & 3)<BR/>5. A maximally great being cannot be both maximally excellent and not-maximally excellent (law of non-contradiction)<BR/>therefore,<BR/>6. A maximally great being is not necessarily everything. (from 1,4 & 5)<BR/><BR/>Since a tomato plant is included in 'everything', it follows from (6) that a maximally great being is not necessarily a tomato plant. There are some things that are entailed by maximal greatness, such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternal and maximal excellence, but other things that are not entailed, such as being a tomato plant. Note, also, that this argument does not prove that a maximally great being cannot be everything, just that it is not necessarily everything.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17581930534332383075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-44511173937951268242008-08-08T10:13:00.000-04:002008-08-08T10:13:00.000-04:00By gum, Reginald! Ignoring your tendency for chest...<I>By gum, Reginald! Ignoring your tendency for chest-thumping, do I have to do your thinking for you, my good man?</I><BR/><BR/>I don't think you're up to the task.<BR/><BR/>You should be grateful to me for not accepting your attempts to embed your conclusions in your definitions. If you were allowed to do that, the actual argumentation phase would be pointless, and we know that pointlessness gives theists the heebie jeebies.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-26954095271626666832008-08-07T23:22:00.000-04:002008-08-07T23:22:00.000-04:00Occam's razor is about eliminating unnecessary thi...<I>Occam's razor is about eliminating unnecessary things, not adding them.</I><BR/><BR/>Right. We eliminate the tomato plants. If God is maximally great, then he would be everything.<BR/><BR/>If God is everything, than he's a tomato plant too. I don't see why you have a problem with that. But for some reason you don't want to say that calling God a tomato plant is "eliminating unnecessary things."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-22218885160826777782008-08-07T09:36:00.000-04:002008-08-07T09:36:00.000-04:00Well, it looks like some of the latest responses t...Well, it looks like some of the latest responses to my previous posts have replaced the art of thinking with the more primal chest-thumping. In response to my suggestion that we don't need both a maximally excellent God <I>and</I> an ultimate standard of excellence when just one will do the job, Reginald Selkirk wrote,<BR/><BR/><I> Apparently "Occam's Razor" now means "circular reasoning." Once again I learn something. Embedding your conclusion in your definitions is question-begging. I suppose from your perspective it sure beats work, though.</I><BR/><BR/>Maximal excellence does not entail that an entity possessing such an attribute is the ultimate standard of excellence. A being might be maximally excellent simply because of a perfect correspondence between it and the ultimate standard. But why have two entities when one will do the job?<BR/><BR/>It is only when maximal excellence is conjoined with maximal greatness that such a being must, necessarily, become the ultimate standard of excellence. I'm assuming that you have read Plantinga on the concept of maximal greatness and what follows from it, so I only provide a skeleton argument as follows:<BR/><BR/>1. God is maximally great (that degree of greatness beyond which it is not logically possible to be greater).<BR/>2. If God is maximally great, then necessarily, He is maximally excellent<BR/>3. If God is maximally great, then necessarily He is the ultimate standard of excellence.<BR/> therefore,<BR/>God is both maximally excellent and the ultimate standard of excellence<BR/><BR/>It follows from this that an activity is good if and only if it corresponds to the way God is.<BR/><BR/>Next, 386SX wrote:<BR/><I> Anything else you want to throw in there? How about tomato plants. One being who, in virtue of being maximally excellent, also defines excellence, and who is made outta tomato plants. Occam's razor!</I><BR/><BR/>Occam's razor is about eliminating unnecessary things, not adding them.<BR/><BR/>Finally, Reginald Selkirk wrote, in response to me pointing out that crow's don't have the same qualification for defining 'black' that a maximally excellent being has for defining excellence:<BR/><I> Mr. Durston, I'll make it very clear for you: you've been beaten. And I'll file you're excuse as to why you would not grant the same liberties of rhetoric to a black-crowist that you yourself demand as a theist under special pleading.</I><BR/><BR/>By gum, Reginald! Ignoring your tendency for chest-thumping, do I have to do your thinking for you, my good man? There is no special pleading here; God and crows are not even remotely in the same category. Your problem is that you arbitrarily made crows the ultimate standard of blackness without any good argument to support your assertion. I've at least sketched out an argument from maximal greatness to the conclusion that such a being must be the standard of excellence. Where's your argument as to why crows, of all black things, should be the ultimate standard of blackness? You are not even in the game until you come up with a good argument as to why crows should define blackness rather than coal, or the absence of electromagnetic radiation, etc.<BR/><BR/><B>Tomorrow I'm heading into the remote wilderness for a week of canoeing and camping. I may have occasional access to the internet during the week after that, so it may be at least two weeks before I can respond to any further comments.</B>Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17581930534332383075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-11727734148166133072008-08-03T10:59:00.000-04:002008-08-03T10:59:00.000-04:00Kirk: Black crows and a good God: Just a couple qu...Kirk: <I>Black crows and a good God: Just a couple quick thoughts. ...<BR/>If one grants my definition of the good...</I><BR/><BR/>------<BR/><BR/>Mr. Durston, I'll make it very clear for you: you've been beaten. And I'll file you're excuse as to why you would not grant the same liberties of rhetoric to a black-crowist that you yourself demand as a theist under <A HREF="http://www.fallacyfiles.org/specplea.html" REL="nofollow">special pleading</A>.<BR/><BR/>-----<BR/><BR/>Quintus: People should know when they're conquered.<BR/>Maximus: Would you, Quintus? Would I?<BR/><BR/>(From the movie <I>Gladiator</I>, screenplay by David Franzoni)<BR/><BR/>------Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-69224984423127335392008-08-02T04:31:00.000-04:002008-08-02T04:31:00.000-04:00Occam's razor: Instead of having both a Maximally ...<I>Occam's razor: Instead of having both a Maximally Excellent being and something 'out there' that defines excellence (or goodness), why not just use Occam's razor and go for one being who, in virtue of being maximally excellent, also defines excellence?</I><BR/><BR/>Anything else you want to throw in there? How about tomato plants.<BR/><BR/>One being who, in virtue of being maximally excellent, also defines excellence, and who is made outta tomato plants.<BR/><BR/>Occam's razor!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-20962245131394773712008-08-01T10:32:00.000-04:002008-08-01T10:32:00.000-04:00Furthermore, Alvin Plantinga has raised the bar on...<I>Furthermore, Alvin Plantinga has raised the bar one notch in his definition of God to include maximal excellence, that degree of excellence beyond which it is not logically possible to be more excellent.</I><BR/><BR/>Interesting. Didn't Plantinga's famous Free Will Defense against the argument from evil entail that God must value Free Will for the wicked more than the suffering of innocent children? Wouldn't a maximally excellent being not have to make such compromises?<BR/><BR/><I>Occam's razor: Instead of having both a Maximally Excellent being and something 'out there' that defines excellence (or goodness), why not just use Occam's razor and go for one being who, in virtue of being maximally excellent, also defines excellence? Furthermore, a being who is both maximally excellent and the ultimate standard of excellence is greater than a being who is just maximally excellent. Therefore, if God is maximally great then, necessarily, he must not only be maximally excellent, but he becomes the definition of excellence.</I><BR/><BR/>Apparently "Occam's Razor" now means "circular reasoning." Once again I learn something. Embedding your conclusion in your definitions is question-begging. I suppose from your perspective it sure beats work, though.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-62801644272648549562008-07-31T17:12:00.000-04:002008-07-31T17:12:00.000-04:00Well, it's been longer than I thought. As I mentio...Well, it's been longer than I thought. As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I'm traveling for the next several weeks, and have only occasional access to internet.<BR/><BR/><B>Response to Baysian Bouffant's contribtion to this discussion:</B><BR/>BB, your comment is bizarre in light of the thread to which you refer. What can I say but to suggest to interested parties to go back and read through my arguments in that thread.<BR/><BR/><B>Response to Reginald Selkirk's objections:</B><BR/>First, I must say that I am pleased to see to honest objections, and a very interesting Crow analogy. Good stuff! Much better than contemplating the letters 'BS'.<BR/><BR/><B>Black crows and a good God:</B> Just a couple quick thoughts. Although it is commonplace to define God with the essential attribute of being 'perfectly good', it is unusual to define crows as 'perfectly black'. Crows may be thought to be black, but is it an essential attribute that they be 'perfectly black'? Furthermore, Alvin Plantinga has raised the bar one notch in his definition of God to include maximal excellence, that degree of excellence beyond which it is not logically possible to be more excellent. Maximal excellence, argues Plantinga, is entailed by the attribute of maximal greatness, which is a generally granted attribute of God. Maximal excellence, therefore, is a necessary attribute of God. No one has claimed that a necessary attribute of crows is maximal blackness, that degree of blackness beyond which it is not logically possible to be more black.<BR/><BR/><B>Occam's razor:</B> Instead of having both a Maximally Excellent being and something 'out there' that defines excellence (or goodness), why not just use Occam's razor and go for one being who, in virtue of being maximally excellent, also defines excellence? Furthermore, a being who is both maximally excellent and the ultimate standard of excellence is greater than a being who is just maximally excellent. Therefore, if God is maximally great then, necessarily, he must not only be maximally excellent, but he becomes the definition of excellence.<BR/><BR/><B>Euthyphro's Dilemma:</B> First let me state once again Euthyphro's Dilemma for the sake of those who may not have read my last post. Essentially, the two horns of the dilemma are as follows:<BR/><BR/>1. Something is good because the gods like it (Problem: the gods disagree among themselves about what they like. This also raises the problem of arbitrariness.)<BR/>2. The gods like it because it is good (in which case, the gods are irrelevant; what we're really interested in is what it is that makes something good.)<BR/><BR/><B>Kirk's Solution:</B> In option (1), it is the gods that define what is good. I'm going with option (1), but to solve the two problems, we can use Occam's Razor and reduce the number of gods to just one, and postulate that the one God is immutable in essence. Thus, there is no disagreement among the gods as to what they like, since there is only one God, and since the one God is immutable (unchanging in His essence), there is no arbitrariness. So what we are left with is a variation of option (1); it is the immutable God that defines what is good. With that in mind, I adopt a correspondence theory of 'good' as follows:<BR/><BR/>Good: an activity (or entity) is good if and only if it corresponds to the way God is.<BR/><BR/><B>Selkirk's first objection:</B> "<I> it presupposes the existence of God</I><BR/><BR/>Reginald Selkirk, Euthyphro's Dilemma is not a discussion about whether or not God exists; it is a discussion about what it is that makes something 'good'. Euthyphro's option (1) not only assumes the existence of one or more gods, but it also assumes that it is one or more gods that define what is good (by what they like). All I've done is refine option (1). If we do not assume the existence of one or more gods, then option (1) disappears and Euthyphro's Dilemma vanishes. You need two horns for a dilemma and one of those horns assumes the existence of one or more gods. Now if I were attempting to argue for the existence of God and assumed the existence of God in my opening premise and from that concluded that God exists, then that would be a circular argument which would, indeed, be invalid. But we are dealing with Euthyphro's Dilemma here, which assumes the existence of one or more gods in its first option. Therefore, it seems to me that your first objection fails.<BR/><BR/><B>Selkirk's second objection:</B> <I> it does not get you clear of the arbitrariness which is the first point of the Euthyphro dilemma. If for example, God committed and advocated genocide, then genocide must be good. I don't think there are many people who could agree with that, although you may be the rare exception.</I><BR/><BR/>You may need to clarify what you mean by 'arbitrariness'. In your genocide example you imply that if we do not like or agree with The Entity that Defines Good (whatever it might be), it must be arbitrary. But whether we like it, or agree with it, is irrelevant to the question of whether it is arbitrary. So as it stands right now, I think your second objection fails as well.<BR/><BR/>Perhaps, by 'arbitrary' you mean 'without grounds or reasonless'. I think I could grant this additional meaning to the concept of 'arbitrariness'. However, if we grant that God must be maximally great, then it follows that he must also be maximally excellent. Maximal excellence, it would seem to me, would provide sufficient and necessary grounds for defining goodness.<BR/><BR/><B>Equivocation between 'goodness' and 'God: </B> If one grants my definition of the good, then 'perfect goodness' or 'maximal excellence' merely become descriptors of God. The concepts of 'good' or 'excellence' are of no personal use to God in the same way that the concept of 'Kirk-ness' is of no personal use to Kirk. It is useful to other people only. For example, 'Kirk-ness' might be of use to other people when they are attempting to construct an effigy of Kirk or mimic Kirk. In the same way, the concepts of good are only useful to other beings besides God if God is what defines perfect goodness. Sayings like 'God is good' are equivalent to saying, 'God is what he is'; they tell us nothing. However, if we say Bill is good, this means something. It means that Bill has something about him that corresponds to God, or maximal excellence. So when considering whether we like goodness, or beauty, or excellence, the ultimate question becomes, 'do we like God?'<BR/><BR/><B>Reginald Selkirk wrote:</B><BR/><I> Some apologists claim that if God were to provide ample evidence of his existence, that would make it impossible for anyone not to believe in Him, and thus would take away from the "free will" of skeptics.</I><BR/><BR/>Well, that certainly would not be me.<BR/><BR/><B>I don't know when I next get to check this thread out, but hopefully sometime next week.</B>Kirk Durstonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00678032887521146961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-48933006980242556052008-07-31T13:40:00.000-04:002008-07-31T13:40:00.000-04:00RS: "this "free will" that the theists offer sound...RS: "this "free will" that the theists offer sounds very shallow and unappealing, it seems to consist of the right to make bad decisions based on insufficient information. That's not something I would get all het up about."<BR/><BR/>kirk: "<I>There is a formal definition of free will in philosophy held by the consensus of atheist, agnostic, and theistic philosophers...</I>"<BR/><BR/>Some apologists claim that if God were to provide ample evidence of his existence, that would make it impossible for anyone not to believe in Him, and thus would take away from the "free will" of skeptics.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-39504100737036215872008-07-28T22:04:00.000-04:002008-07-28T22:04:00.000-04:00I don't suppose Shea considered the possibility th...<I>I don't suppose Shea considered the possibility that Leakey was asking the question in order to lead into a discussion about what we know or don't know about human motivations. Shea gives me the impression that he is a rather shallow thinker himself.</I><BR/><BR/>That's the point, I think. Leakey doesn't know much about human motivations, but Shea does. (Probably something to do with Jesus and souls, I'm sure.) Therefore Leaky is a godless intellectual, and therefore stupid.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Shea also wrote, regarding the "Beware the Believers" viral video:<BR/><BR/><I>However, I discovered that, thanks to the same sort of bizarre lack of elementary social aptitude that Leakey displayed in the film I saw decades ago, the humor and satire are indeed lost on… Richard Dawkins.<BR/><BR/>I don’t mean that Dawkins got angry about being spoofed. I mean that Dawkins was too thick to figure out if he was being spoofed or not. On his blog, after discovering the video, he pleads for enlightenment from his fellow Brights:<BR/><BR/>"If anyone can understand a single word of this, don’t bother to translate, just tell me whose side it’s on."<BR/><BR/>That would be funny enough, given that Dawkins is our natural moral and intellectual superior, according to his own press releases.</I><BR/><BR/>Yeah, and Michael Edmondson, the creator of the video has already said about it: "I suppose the answer is that I tried to make something that was funny to me and It's not really meant to convince anyone of anything."<BR/><BR/>"Funny enough", yeah, hardy har har.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-49219751476188678322008-07-27T11:42:00.000-04:002008-07-27T11:42:00.000-04:00I don't suppose Shea considered the possibility th...I don't suppose Shea considered the possibility that Leakey was asking the question in order to lead into a discussion about what we know or don't know about human motivations. Shea gives me the impression that he is a rather shallow thinker himself.Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07891989201161664914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-12406477240204362062008-07-25T21:46:00.000-04:002008-07-25T21:46:00.000-04:00For the Judeo-Christian God, the answer is essenti...<I>For the Judeo-Christian God, the answer is essentially (1). To be more specific, the definition of good that I would hold to is as follows:<BR/><BR/>Good: An activity is good if, and only if, it corresponds to the way God is.</I><BR/><BR/><BR/>A few years ago, I was having a deep philosophical discussion with a colleague of mine from down the hall, as to the possibility of the existence of non-black crows. We were deeply divided on this issue; he for the possibility and me against. Finally I turned the tide with this argument: "I am going to define <I>black</I> as <I>the color of crows</I>. Therefore it will never be possible for a non-black crow to exist. My colleague is not gifted with superior skills as a master logician, as I am, and expressed much perplexment before finally acknowledging that I had indeed won with an airtight logical argument. I went on to explain to him the breadth of my intellectual achievement, because now we could proceed to a discussion of whether it might be possible for non-crows to be black.<BR/><BR/>My friend is of a scientific bent, and so rather than hang around to be enlightened by my profound thoughts on that matter, he instead left on a worldwide search to find a non-black crow. Over the last few years I received postcards from three continents as he pursued his quest.<BR/><BR/>Finally, just a few days ago, I arrived at work to find this note on my desk: "I am back, please meet me in my office for a chat. - T." I strolled down the hall, and soon after I entered his office, he withdrew the cloth cover from a bird cage to reveal a completely white crow. "This specimen should finally make my case for non-black crows," he crowed.<BR/><BR/>"Quite to the contrary, my dear chap," I replied, "That argument was settled years ago when I came up with my definition for <I>black</I>. However, I must now congratulate you on your own intellectual achievement: <I>you have proven that white is black.</I>"<BR/><BR/>His reaction to this was rather impolite and violent, so I shall not describe it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-14476641923015996492008-07-25T18:57:00.000-04:002008-07-25T18:57:00.000-04:00I.e. it begs the question that goodness is depende...<I>I.e. it begs the question that goodness is dependent on the existence of God.</I><BR/><BR/>Even so, who says God has to be good? God? God says God is good, so therefore God is good? Must be a really honest dude I guess!!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-78712399268566004402008-07-25T16:23:00.000-04:002008-07-25T16:23:00.000-04:00Good: An activity is good if, and only if, it corr...<I>Good: An activity is good if, and only if, it corresponds to the way God is.<BR/>..<BR/>What, exactly, is the problem that you see? From the context of your post, your comment immediately follows my definition of 'good'. Normally, in philosophy, you come up with a counter argument, or a defeating proposition. It does not logically follow that, because you refer to a person's response as 'BS' that, therefore, you have refuted the person's response. You are going to have to do some work. What is wrong with my definition of 'good'?</I><BR/><BR/>To start with, it is a definition that no nontheist would agree with, since it presupposes the existence of God; otherwise "good" would be incoherent. (I.e. it begs the question that goodness is dependent on the existence of God.) Second, it does not get you clear of the arbitrariness which is the first point of the Euthyphro dilemma. If for example, God committed and advocated genocide, then genocide must be good. I don't think there are many people who could agree with that, although you may be the rare exception.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-77287889329889606032008-07-25T16:04:00.000-04:002008-07-25T16:04:00.000-04:00the only way to show a system to be internally inc...<I>the only way to show a system to be internally inconsistent is to adopt that system's premises and then show a contradiction.</I><BR/><BR/>Kirk Durston does not understand that, as evidenced by the thread on time and infinity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-36189392218558419112008-07-25T15:10:00.000-04:002008-07-25T15:10:00.000-04:00Jeffrey Shallit wrote:If causal paths are so compl...<B>Jeffrey Shallit wrote:</B><BR/><I>If causal paths are so complicated we can't determine if an action is good or bad, then we can just as well say that apparently good actions are actually bad, as the reverse. So you have to discard the view that your god is all good.</I><BR/><BR/>Jeffrey, I see two problems here. The first sentence badly misrepresents my argument, and the last sentence does not follow from the first (i.e., your conclusion is non sequitur).<BR/><BR/>Regarding misrepresenting my argument: The main point of my first paper is to show that, even though we are in a position to know if a particular event is good or bad, and can even assign an intrinsic moral value to it, the complexity of history makes it impossible for us to know if the net moral value of all the <I>consequences</I> of that event to the end of history, relative to the net moral value of the best possible alternate world is positive or negative.<BR/><BR/>I'm still mystified as to why you think it logically follows that, because we do not know the net moral value of all the consequences of any event (good or bad) to the end of history that, therefore, God is not good. There is no logical link whatsoever. <BR/><BR/><B>Jeffrey Shallit wrote regarding William Rowe's claim, and mine, that the consensus among philosophers is that Plantinga's FWD has defeated the logical problem of evil:</B><BR/><I>Well, go read the Stanford Encylopedia entry on the problem of evil. They certainly don't agree with you.</I><BR/><BR/>Jeffrey, appealing to one article to support your position is very risky. As I said from the outset, "Occasionally, an objection is published, but thus far, such objections are relatively easy to deal with. The real discussion has moved to the evidential or probabilistic problem of evil…". That is William Rowe's conclusion as well, which I referred to earlier. In preparing for my Masters thesis, I did two reading courses on the problem of evil that included reading every paper published on the logical or the evidential problem of evil since Planting published his FWD. I can back William Rowe's conclusion (which I quoted in my last post) that there is no longer any serious defense of the logical problem of evil. I still check out any interesting papers that surface on either of these two subjects. There is still the occasional one that shows up, but an occasional paper by no means undoes a consensus. You do not have to take my word for it, just take all the papers on the two problems, stack them up side by side, and you will have a very large stack dealing with the evidential problem, and less than a dozen papers attempting to defend the logical problem of evil.<BR/><BR/><B>Better still.</B> If you or anyone else on this blog discussion, thinks you have an argument that defeats Plantinga's FWD, then let's see it. If you cannot produce a good argument, then you have no rational grounds for your position. I'm asking for an argument here, not yet another appeal to authority. Let's see one. Time to ante up.<BR/><BR/><B>Jeffrey Shallit wrote, regarding the standard convention of beginning with the assumption that the probability of God's existence is 0.5 and then arguing from that:</B><BR/><I>By the same argument, Zeus exists with probability 0.5, as does the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Loki, and any other god you can name. Get real.</I><BR/><BR/>Jeffrey, this is not my convention, it is a standard one often used in philosophy papers dealing with the existence of God, especially those that use Bayes' Theorem. If you are going to argue that God does not exist, and begin with a probability less than 0.5, then you are essentially assuming your conclusion in your opening premise …. obviously a fallacy. Of course, there are plenty of arguments that are deductive in nature that make no opening assumption about the probability that God exists.<BR/><BR/><B>Reginald Selkirk wrote, regarding my response to Euthyphro's dilemma:</B><BR/><I>For someone who has spent so much time hanging out in philosophy departments, you don't seem able to distinguish between a substantive philosophical argument and apologetic BS.</I><BR/><BR/>What, exactly, is the problem that you see? From the context of your post, your comment immediately follows my definition of 'good'. Normally, in philosophy, you come up with a counter argument, or a defeating proposition. It does not logically follow that, because you refer to a person's response as 'BS' that, therefore, you have refuted the person's response. You are going to have to do some work. What is wrong with my definition of 'good'?<BR/><BR/><B>Kirk wrote:</B><BR/><I>I see moral laws given to humanity by God as a set of operating instructions that are designed to reduce suffering and maximize our long term fulfillment.</I><BR/><BR/><B>and Kirk also wrote:</B><BR/><I>Another simplistic notion that, in my own experience, almost all atheists have is that we are actually in a position to know what an omniscient being should or should not allow. I can't see how an intelligent person would need more than one or two minutes of thought to realize the inanity of that proposition, given the complexity of history, with its billions of interaction causal chains, where every event spawns an increasing number of consequences, modifying an increasing number of causal chains."</I><BR/><BR/><B>In response, Reginald Selkirk write:</B><BR/><I>In this person's opinion, your notion that we can know what God wants us to do is simplistic and inane.</I><BR/><BR/>Reginald, of course, by 'this person' you are referring to myself. Your conclusion does not follow from what I wrote. If you will read carefully the parts that you quoted, you will notice that:<BR/>a) we can know what God wants us to do (assuming He has given us a set of moral laws) and,<BR/>b) we are in no position to know what God should or should not allow on the basis of the consequential complexity of history.<BR/><BR/>If you think there is a contradiction between the two statements, then show it. It does not logically follow that because we know what we should do that, therefore, we should know what God should allow. Nor does it logically follow that because we do not know what God should allow that, therefore, we do not know what we should do. We are morally obligated to act on the basis of what we could reasonably be expected to know. What we 'could reasonably be expected to know' is a lot different from what an omniscient being 'could reasonably be expected to know'. What an omniscient being should allow is the Being's problem, not ours. We simply do not have the information to know what God should and should not allow. We only have enough information to know what we should do.<BR/><BR/><B>I am leaving in a couple hours and will have limited access to the internet over the next 4 weeks, so I will attempt to check in here when I can to see if I can respond to any further comments. However, it may be a little tardy.</B>Kirk Durstonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00678032887521146961noreply@blogger.com