theodicy

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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Immanuel Can
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Re: theodicy

Post by Immanuel Can »

attofishpi wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 12:53 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 4:41 pm
Sculptor wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 2:08 pm
In that case it was "invented" by Confucius, as it is at least as old as him.
Again, it was not. As I recall, all these objections were already met in the article. You really should read it.
The Golden Rule? Who cares anyway!

It is not rocket science for a person to look down at his child and say "Hey, don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to yourself." - there's probably countless people going back through time that thought that one up!!
The article lists the various alleged “GR’s.” Check it out.
uwot
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theidiocy

Post by uwot »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:53 pmActually, the GR is not universal, and not invented. It’s Christian, in the first place, and in the second, not at all the same as the so-called “Negative Golden Rule” of, say, Buddhism. So you’ve just got that dead wrong.

I think PN once had an article on this…
There are several articles about the Golden Rule; for example:
The Golden Rule Not So Golden Anymore
https://philosophynow.org/issues/74/The ... en_Anymore
The Golden Rule Revisited
https://philosophynow.org/issues/125/Th ... _Revisited
The Not So Golden Rule
https://philosophynow.org/issues/125/Th ... olden_Rule
It's not clear that any of these is the article Mr Can is referring to, since none does the heavy lifting Mr Can apparently believes:
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 2:06 pm“Invented” means “created by humans.”
Anyway, go and read the article, if you want the whole explanation of that.
As someone who has written several articles for the magazine, I might be flattered that Mr Can thinks we authors are so authoritative.
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 4:41 pm
Sculptor wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 2:08 pm it was "invented" by Confucius, as it is at least as old as him.
Again, it was not. As I recall, all these objections were already met in the article. You really should read it.
This is an appeal to authority where the authority isn't even named.
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 1:06 amThe article lists the various alleged “GR’s.” Check it out.
"The article" is becoming mythologised; it can now do things that Mr Can wishes it to. That's how some minds work. Replace 'The article' with 'The god' and you see the birth of religion.
uwot
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Re: theodicy

Post by uwot »

promethean75 wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 5:04 amPlease see Wittgenstein's response to Moore's 'Here is a Hand' thesis.
Done.
Now what?
Belinda
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Re: theidiocy

Post by Belinda »

uwot wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:59 pm
Belinda wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 5:28 pmWhat is absolute truth? Nobody can nail it down.
We know the limits of our absolute knowledge. This was nailed down by Parmenides and Descartes - at any given moment we know that whatever experience we are having, it exists. Whatever you see, hear, smell, taste or feel, whatever sense of Belindaness you currently have - that absolutely exists. The thing is, as Parmenides and Descartes discovered, nothing absolute follows from that. You might define 'absolute truth' as the cause of the experiences you have - broadly speaking materialists claim there is some underlying 'physical' world that stimulates certain reactions in a physical brain. On the other hand, with a slash of Occam's Razor, idealists do away with the physical world and argue that since all that is necessary is the mental phenomena, that's all that exists. The world looks exactly the same whichever view you subscribe to.
Belinda wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 5:28 pmWhat matters is we love it and seek it in this relative world.
Well yeah, and well done if you find some story you take to be true. The problem is the people who have a rotten story they believe and want others to believe it.
I like what uwot wrote above especially as it fits with my favourite theory of existence that experience is existence and existence is experience.


However please note I did not say absolute knowledge I said absolute truth. Uncertainty defines absolute truth as it pertains to lives limited to finality and subjective perceptions.

So Absolute truth is matter of faith, and is an aspect of absolute good. Absolute truth, absolute good, and absolute beauty are Platonic realities not relative realities. Bearing in mind that experience is existence then absolute experience is experience of Platonic realities.

(I have no idea how all this fits with so-called 'life after death' if indeed it does fit it at all.)
Belinda
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Re: theodicy

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote:
It’s your “invented god” idea that is going to hand power to the despot. Once you give a person or an elite power to tell people what their “god” is, you’ve handed them all the power they’re ever going to need.\
Once you understand that all authority is not supernatural but human nature you can fight against authority that is its own justification. Human nature can be free from supernatural Authority.

Biblical literalists and popes are alike tyrants.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: theodicy

Post by Immanuel Can »

Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:26 am Once you understand that all authority is not supernatural but human nature you can fight against authority that is its own justification. Human nature can be free from supernatural Authority.
Then you have no defence against tyranny, and no grounds for objection to it. For it is part of “human nature,” as Nietzsche believed, that people have the “will to power.” So if some man oppresses you, too bad for you. End of story. That’s “human nature.”

Moreover, Papists and other despots are just an expression of “human nature” too…what else could they ever be? So they’re legit now.

But it “justifies” nothing, because justification is an action that presumes the existence of moral objective facts. Absent any supernatural authority, there’s no way to “justify” anything….nor any need to do so.
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Re: theodicy

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 1:15 pm
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:26 am Once you understand that all authority is not supernatural but human nature you can fight against authority that is its own justification. Human nature can be free from supernatural Authority.
Then you have no defence against tyranny, and no grounds for objection to it. For it is part of “human nature,” as Nietzsche believed, that people have the “will to power.” So if some man oppresses you, too bad for you. End of story. That’s “human nature.”

Moreover, Papists and other despots are just an expression of “human nature” too…what else could they ever be? So they’re legit now.

But it “justifies” nothing, because justification is an action that presumes the existence of moral objective facts. Absent any supernatural authority, there’s no way to “justify” anything….nor any need to do so.
In the absence of supernatural authority we have human reason to which is added the compass bearing of the moral tradition dating from three millennia ago, plus ordinary human sympathy.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: theodicy

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Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 4:54 pm In the absence of supernatural authority we have human reason to which is added the compass bearing of the moral tradition dating from three millennia ago, plus ordinary human sympathy.
Well, supernatural authority is not “absent.” He’s just “denied.”

Reason is not a human invention, nor does it come from human nature itself. It proceeds from the orderly nature of the universe, plus our capacity for reading it, both God-given.

There is no “moral tradition” everybody agrees on…nothing close, in fact. And human sympathy is the weakest of all of these things you list, since axe-murderers serving life sentences routinely receive “sympathy” messages from devoted fans. Sympathetic, no doubt; crazy, also certain.
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Re: theodicy

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 5:00 pm
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 4:54 pm In the absence of supernatural authority we have human reason to which is added the compass bearing of the moral tradition dating from three millennia ago, plus ordinary human sympathy.
Well, supernatural authority is not “absent.” He’s just “denied.”

Reason is not a human invention, nor does it come from human nature itself. It proceeds from the orderly nature of the universe, plus our capacity for reading it, both God-given.

There is no “moral tradition” everybody agrees on…nothing close, in fact. And human sympathy is the weakest of all of these things you list, since axe-murderers serving life sentences routinely receive “sympathy” messages from devoted fans. Sympathetic, no doubt; crazy, also certain.
The great world religions for all their faults have carried the moral tradition.

I too believe the 'universe' is orderly, therefore human reason was a necessary event. Necessary events are nature-given , not God-given.

Human sympathy is necessary though not sufficient for good behaviour.
uwot
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Re: theidiocy

Post by uwot »

Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 amI like what uwot wrote above especially as it fits with my favourite theory of existence that experience is existence and existence is experience.
Well as I'm sure you know, that's Berkeley's esse est percipi - to be is to be perceived. It's a perfectly coherent and very parsimonious theory.
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 amHowever please note I did not say absolute knowledge I said absolute truth.
I did so here:
I wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:59 pmYou might define 'absolute truth' as the cause of the experiences you have...
That's a fairly uncontroversial definition of absolute truth. If the absolute truth isn't the source of your experiences, regardless of how you interpret them, then what is it?
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 amUncertainty defines absolute truth as it pertains to lives limited to finality and subjective perceptions.
I don't understand that.
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 amSo Absolute truth is matter of faith...
Well, there's a lot of people who believe they know the absolute truth, as in the cause of their experience. Do you think there is some substantive difference between belief and faith?
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 am...and is an aspect of absolute good. Absolute truth, absolute good, and absolute beauty are Platonic realities not relative realities. Bearing in mind that experience is existence then absolute experience is experience of Platonic realities.
It's not so much "bearing in mind" as assuming, but I take your point. I just don't have any experience of any Platonic reality; all my experiences have so far been associated with the corporeal. Perhaps I have never recovered from reading Hume.
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 am(I have no idea how all this fits with so-called 'life after death' if indeed it does fit it at all.)
You and me both.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: theodicy

Post by Immanuel Can »

Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 9:32 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 5:00 pm
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 4:54 pm In the absence of supernatural authority we have human reason to which is added the compass bearing of the moral tradition dating from three millennia ago, plus ordinary human sympathy.
Well, supernatural authority is not “absent.” He’s just “denied.”

Reason is not a human invention, nor does it come from human nature itself. It proceeds from the orderly nature of the universe, plus our capacity for reading it, both God-given.

There is no “moral tradition” everybody agrees on…nothing close, in fact. And human sympathy is the weakest of all of these things you list, since axe-murderers serving life sentences routinely receive “sympathy” messages from devoted fans. Sympathetic, no doubt; crazy, also certain.
The great world religions for all their faults have carried the moral tradition.
Nope. They don’t.

If you knew about moral incommensurability, a fact now universally recognized among sociologists, you would know that.
I too believe the 'universe' is orderly, therefore
Do you bother to ask how that is even possible, if the origins of the universe are in random chance?

Where did you ever see an accident infuse more order into a situation? In every case, an accident disorders, not orders.
Human sympathy is necessary though not sufficient for good behaviour.
You mean that people cannot possibly behave well without feeling sympathy? That’s obviously not the case. Good behaviour can be motivated by instruction, by habit, by guilt, by fear of punishment…sympathy isn’t even necessary, let alone sufficient.
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Re: theidiocy

Post by Belinda »

uwot wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 10:08 pm
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 amI like what uwot wrote above especially as it fits with my favourite theory of existence that experience is existence and existence is experience.
Well as I'm sure you know, that's Berkeley's esse est percipi - to be is to be perceived. It's a perfectly coherent and very parsimonious theory.
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 amHowever please note I did not say absolute knowledge I said absolute truth.
I did so here:
I wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:59 pmYou might define 'absolute truth' as the cause of the experiences you have...
That's a fairly uncontroversial definition of absolute truth. If the absolute truth isn't the source of your experiences, regardless of how you interpret them, then what is it?
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 amUncertainty defines absolute truth as it pertains to lives limited to finality and subjective perceptions.
I don't understand that.
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 amSo Absolute truth is matter of faith...
Well, there's a lot of people who believe they know the absolute truth, as in the cause of their experience. Do you think there is some substantive difference between belief and faith?
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 am...and is an aspect of absolute good. Absolute truth, absolute good, and absolute beauty are Platonic realities not relative realities. Bearing in mind that experience is existence then absolute experience is experience of Platonic realities.
It's not so much "bearing in mind" as assuming, but I take your point. I just don't have any experience of any Platonic reality; all my experiences have so far been associated with the corporeal. Perhaps I have never recovered from reading Hume.
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:17 am(I have no idea how all this fits with so-called 'life after death' if indeed it does fit it at all.)
You and me both.
Berkeley was not an absolute idealist as he thought God pre-established the harmony
For Berkeley, the ideas that we have of sensible things are not caused in us by independently existing material things; rather, these ideas simply are the sensible things themselves. But sensible things have continued existence—even when we finite minds are not perceiving them—because they continue to exist in the mind of God, whose perception of things not only causes the sensible things to exist but also from time to time causes them to be perceived by us. Thus for Berkeley, our perception of sensible things is nothing other than our perception of ideas in God, and sensible things have an orderly, predictable, and enduring existence because of the wisdom and goodness of God. For Berkeley, then, the immaterialist view of reality not only refutes skepticism but also provides indirect theoretical support for theism. Far from seeking to reduce the real world to the status of "mere"

Read more: Idealism - Early Modern Idealism: Leibniz And Berkeley - Substances, Ideas, Substance, and Perception - JRank Articles https://science.jrank.org/pages/9734/Id ... z7d4iHma3N
Absolute truth as one of the aspects of existence-itself is the uncaused cause of all events, so yes, it's the cause of each event. It's a Platonic reality not an empirical reality, because it's impossible for anyone to experience Platonic reality. Some people say Platonic realities are supernatural substances but I don't. I think of Platonic realities as universally psychological, sort of like Chomsky explains universal grammar. If it were not that our lives are uncertain and that we will die we could have no inkling of universal or Platonic anything, which contrasts with the relative and the particular.
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Re: theodicy

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Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Nature of Evil
From the Thomistic Philosophy website
The ultimate motivation even of moral evil, though, still arises from a desire for some good, but for a lesser good when one is supposed to choose a higher one. Or it arises from the desire for a good that is not appropriate to a given time or place of circumstance.
Some good, lesser good, higher good. Yours or mine? Here and now or there and then? In reaction to what situation we are all likely to be familiar with?

In a world where what some construe to be a moral good others construe to be a moral evil.

Instead, as per usual, let's keep it all up in the stratosphere of the abstract:
So, for Aquinas (following Aristotle), no one chooses evil as evil; rather one makes an evil choice when one chooses a good which reason should know is lesser or inappropriate instead of the true good. The evil, then, of moral evils depends entirely on the free agent who deprives their own actions of the moral goodness, or rationality, which such acts are due as acts of a rational, human, agent. The free rational agent is solely responsible for the act being deprived of the goodness it should have.
I am often baffled by this. Don't those who note a conclusion like this ever stop to think that out in the real world of actual human interactions, it can be made applicable to those all up and down the moral and political spectrum?

Even the assumption of autonomy, free will, volition, etc., often never goes much beyond a conceptual, theoretical "world of words" philosophical assessment.
Getting back to natural or physical evil, it may be hard to see how such evils are supposed to be privations. We tend to view the natural evils that tell against God’s goodness as natural disasters, diseases, birth defects and ultimately death. Earthquakes that devastate whole cities and cripple or kill thousands or tens of thousands of innocent people. Virus outbreaks which kill millions or cancers which slowly and painfully take the life of innocent children. The earth or water which move and bury or drown people are real things, not privations; the viruses and cancers which take the lives of their victims are not the lack of something, but biological entities with a kind of life of their own.
Please. As though "natural disasters, diseases, birth defects and ultimately death" are not directly linked to a God, the God, your God bringing them about in the first place. It's not for nothing that whenever the media is covering the latest natural disaster, you often find references to God among those being interviewed. Often in a place of worship. Mostly they revolve around God's mysterious ways, but every once in a while, you have someone bitterly rejecting their God. "How could God let this happen?!!"

Then, for others, cue Harold Kushner.
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Re: theodicy

Post by iambiguous »

Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Nature of Evil
From the Thomistic Philosophy website
Evil and Objective Natures

The fact that evil is a privation of a due good implies that whatever things suffer natural or physical evil have objective natures. That is, they exist as belonging to certain classes or categories of things, for, the goodness or perfection that a thing is supposed to have is determined by the kind of thing it is. This is the thing’s nature, the internal principle whereby it is what it is, and does what is characteristic of things of that sort. Dogs, humans and other animals for that matter, have each their own objective nature that is supposed to see; this truth underlies the fact that when they do not see, they have suffered a natural or physical evil.
Oh well, here we go again...

Let's talk about evil. But let's talk about it in such a way that, in regard to the lives that we actually live, it is barely recognizable. Instead, let's entangle it in the intellectual contraptions we concoct to discuss "privations" and "classes and categories" and "goodness and perfection" and "human nature".

Human nature. As opposed to the nature of dogs.

Of course, dogs don't invent philosophy forums on an internet to ponder evil in their world. Let alone Gods to explain it all away.
Aquinas explains that the objective nature of a thing specifies its various perfections, goods which do (or should) belong to it, for it to be complete in its being.
Okay, how then did he go about demonstrating the existence of the Christian God? And how on Earth -- beyond the "spiritual contraptions" he thought up in his head -- did he go about demonstrating God's loving, just and merciful nature given the world that we do live in?

Does this...

"Everything is said to be good so far as it is perfect; for in that way only is it desirable (as shown above. Now a thing is said to be perfect if it lacks nothing according to the mode of its perfection. But since everything is what it is by its form (and since the form presupposes certain things, and from the form certain things necessarily follow), in order for a thing to be perfect and good it must have a form, together with all that precedes and follows upon that form. . . . But the form itself is signified by the species; for everything is placed in its species by its form. . . . Further, upon the form follows an inclination to the end, or to an action, or something of the sort; for everything, in so far as it is in act, acts and tends towards that which is in accordance with its form."

...work for you?

An intellectual/spiritual contraption on steroids? Imagine going out into the world and every time you came upon a human tragedy revolving around one or another "act of God" -- natural disasters, hideous diseases -- you gathered all the victims around and noted that.
Belinda
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Re: theodicy

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Sun Sep 04, 2022 5:16 pm Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Nature of Evil
From the Thomistic Philosophy website
Evil and Objective Natures

The fact that evil is a privation of a due good implies that whatever things suffer natural or physical evil have objective natures. That is, they exist as belonging to certain classes or categories of things, for, the goodness or perfection that a thing is supposed to have is determined by the kind of thing it is. This is the thing’s nature, the internal principle whereby it is what it is, and does what is characteristic of things of that sort. Dogs, humans and other animals for that matter, have each their own objective nature that is supposed to see; this truth underlies the fact that when they do not see, they have suffered a natural or physical evil.
Oh well, here we go again...

Let's talk about evil. But let's talk about it in such a way that, in regard to the lives that we actually live, it is barely recognizable. Instead, let's entangle it in the intellectual contraptions we concoct to discuss "privations" and "classes and categories" and "goodness and perfection" and "human nature".

Human nature. As opposed to the nature of dogs.

Of course, dogs don't invent philosophy forums on an internet to ponder evil in their world. Let alone Gods to explain it all away.
Aquinas explains that the objective nature of a thing specifies its various perfections, goods which do (or should) belong to it, for it to be complete in its being.
Okay, how then did he go about demonstrating the existence of the Christian God? And how on Earth -- beyond the "spiritual contraptions" he thought up in his head -- did he go about demonstrating God's loving, just and merciful nature given the world that we do live in?

Does this...

"Everything is said to be good so far as it is perfect; for in that way only is it desirable (as shown above. Now a thing is said to be perfect if it lacks nothing according to the mode of its perfection. But since everything is what it is by its form (and since the form presupposes certain things, and from the form certain things necessarily follow), in order for a thing to be perfect and good it must have a form, together with all that precedes and follows upon that form. . . . But the form itself is signified by the species; for everything is placed in its species by its form. . . . Further, upon the form follows an inclination to the end, or to an action, or something of the sort; for everything, in so far as it is in act, acts and tends towards that which is in accordance with its form."

...work for you?

An intellectual/spiritual contraption on steroids? Imagine going out into the world and every time you came upon a human tragedy revolving around one or another "act of God" -- natural disasters, hideous diseases -- you gathered all the victims around and noted that.
I am not partial to Aristotelian idea of form. He was a scientist but he was a scientist before Darwin.
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