Sunday, November 13, 2011

Broken Law (Updated)

So, a year after promising a reply to my detailed critique of his “evil god challenge,” Stephen Law’s long-awaited response (see the combox remarks he links to) mostly comes to this: You just don’t get it.  Go re-read my paper and this article by Wes Morriston.

“Courtier’s reply,” anyone?

Though he dismisses them as “awful,” Law does not respond in any substantive way to the points I made in my critique.  He does offer a few brief remarks intended to clarify his position, but they serve only to reinforce, rather than answer, my objections.  I’m not going to repeat everything I’ve said before -- if you haven’t already, go read my original post on Law (since which I’ve written a few other relevant posts, which I’ve linked to here).  But you might recall that the problem with Law’s position is as follows.

Law claims that the evidence for the existence of a good God is no better than the evidence for the existence of an evil god, and that any theodicy a theist might put forward as a way of reconciling the fact of evil with the existence of a good God has a parallel in a reverse-theodicy a believer in an evil god could put forward to reconcile the presence of good in the world with the existence of an evil god.  Now, no one actually believes in an evil god.  Therefore, Law concludes, since (he claims) the evidence for a good God is no better than that for an evil God, no one should believe in a good God either.  That’s the “evil god challenge.” 

The trouble is that Law regards this as a challenge to theism generally, and it simply isn’t.  It applies at most only to one, historically idiosyncratic version of theism.  So, suppose you regard the divine attributes as in principle metaphysically separable -- that something that is, for example, omnipotent or omniscient could nevertheless fail to be all-good.  Suppose also that you regard good and evil as on a metaphysical par, neither more fundamental than the other.  And suppose that you consider the grounds for belief in God to consist in an inductive inference to the effect that God is the best explanation of various bits of evidence -- the orderliness of the world, the good we find in it, etc.  Given those specific metaphysical and epistemological assumptions -- the sort that might be made by someone beholden to a “theistic personalist” conception of God and who thinks Paley-style “design arguments” and the like are the best reason to believe in God -- Law’s challenge might be a problem.  (Or maybe not.  But since I have no time either for theistic personalism or for Paley-style “design arguments,” I really couldn’t care less.)

But given different metaphysical and epistemological assumptions, Law’s “evil god challenge” is no challenge at all.  Hence, suppose that, like almost all of the most prominent theologians and philosophers of religion historically (Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Maimonides, Avicenna, Averroes, and Aristotelians, Neo-Platonists, and Thomists and other Scholastics generally) you are a classical theist.  You will hold, accordingly, that God is absolutely simple or non-composite, so that all of the divine attributes are one and thus metaphysically inseparable in principle.  You will also regard God, not as one being among others, but as subsistent being itself or pure actuality, beyond any genus.  And you will regard Him, not as one cause among others, but as that from which all finite causes -- which have, ultimately, only instrumental causality -- necessarily derive their causal power.  Suppose that you also hold that good and evil are not on a metaphysical par, but that evil is a privation of good.  And suppose you endorse the doctrine of the transcendentals, according to which being and goodness are convertible, so that whatever is being itself or pure actuality is also goodness itself, necessarily devoid of evil.  It follows from all this that nothing that is omnipotent could possibly be less than perfectly good, and indeed that nothing that is divine could possibly be less than perfectly good.  

Suppose, finally, that you also think there are demonstrative (as opposed to merely inductive or evidential) arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism -- that you endorse an Aristotelian argument from motion to a purely actual Unmoved Mover, say, or Aquinas’s “existence argument” in On Being and Essence for something that is subsistent being itself, or a Neo-Platonic argument for a source of the world that is an absolute unity.  If such arguments work at all, then given the background metaphysics, they prove conclusively (and not merely with some degree of probability) that there is a God who cannot in principle be anything less than perfectly good.

Given these very different metaphysical and epistemological assumptions, it is blindingly obvious that Law’s “evil god challenge” is completely irrelevant.  His “evil god hypothesis” doesn’t stalemate the arguments for classical theism, for two reasons.  First, unlike the “good god” of theistic personalism, the God of classical theism isn’t in the same genus as Law’s “evil god.”  The God of classical theism isn’t the same kind of thing as Law’s “evil god” at all.  (Indeed, unlike everything else that exists, the God of classical theism isn’t in a genus or kind in the first place -- that’s part of the whole point of classical theism.)  So there is no parallel between alternative “hypotheses” of the sort Law needs in order to get his “challenge” off the ground.  

Second, the arguments typically employed by classical theists simply cannot be stalemated by “evidential” considerations because they are typically not “evidential” or inductive or probabilistic arguments in the first place.  If an Aristotelian argument from motion, or Aquinas’s “existence argument,” or Neo-Platonic arguments work at all, they get you demonstratively to something that is pure actuality, or subsistent being itself, or an absolute unity; and the other metaphysical theses alluded to get you from there to something that is of necessity perfectly good (indeed, something that is goodness itself).  To suggest that what is purely actual or subsistent being itself might, given the “evidence,” be evil, is simply unintelligible.  To make such a suggestion would merely be to show that the one making it doesn’t understand the metaphysical concepts in question.

Now that does not mean that classical theism and the arguments for it are not subject to criticism.  A critic could try to show that there is something wrong with the doctrine of divine simplicity, or with the doctrine of privation, or with the doctrine of the transcendentals, or that there is some fallacy in one of the attempts to provide a demonstrative argument for the existence of the God of classical theism.  But even if an atheist could make such objections stick, it is those objections that will be doing the work, and not the “evil god challenge.”  The “evil god challenge” drops out as simply irrelevant.  

(Compare: Suppose someone presented a purported proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, to which two critics raised objections.  Critic A says that the purported proof contains a fallacy.  Critic B says that the inductive evidence the attempted proof provides can be stalemated by equally good evidence for a counter-theorem.  Critic A may or may not be correct.   Critic B is, as they say, “not even wrong.”  He is merely embarrassing himself, and even if critic A turns out to be right, critic B will still have been merely embarrassing himself.)

Now it is pretty clear that what Law should say to all this is: “Fine, the ‘evil god challenge’ is not a completely general challenge to theism, but only, specifically, to evidential arguments for theistic personalism.  That’s at least something, even if it is nowhere close to the atheistic knock-out punch I hoped it would be.”  But rather than make use of this dignified exit from the hole he finds himself in, Law has chosen to keep digging.  Still insisting that my criticisms are “awful,” Law makes several attempts to clarify his position.  In particular, he says this:

[CLARIFICATION I:] My point is that even if it could be shown that an evil god is an impossibility (and that does seem to be your strategy, after all), we might still ask, "But supposing it wasn't an impossibility, would an evil god not in any case be pretty conclusively ruled out on empirical grounds - e.g. given the amount of good we observe?" If the answer to that question is "yes", then the challenge remains to explain why a good god is not similarly ruled out.

And he says this:

[CLARIFICATION II:] My argument is that there is, on the face of it, overwhelming empirical evidence AGAINST the good god hypothesis (whether or not this god is thought of as a person, as being morally responsible, etc. personhood is not required).  Most people accept this, unless (i) they're religious, and (ii) it dawns on them what the consequences of this are re their belief in a good god, when many suddenly get radically skeptical!

The challenge is, then to explain, why, if the evil god hypothesis is ruled out pretty conclusively on empirical grounds, the same is not true of the good god hypothesis.

To these combox remarks, I replied with a combox remark of my own, to which Law responded with this and this:

[CLARIFICATION III:] Even if an evil God is a conceptual impossibility, the fact that he can ALSO be ruled out on empirical grounds (which you may dispute of course) raises the question, "well, why isn't a good god similarly ruled out on empirical grounds?" The question remains whether or evil god is ruled out on empirical grounds. Surely this is bloody obvious by now?

PS and of course my argument does not depend on the thought that Christians arrive at their views about god inductively based on observation of the world. As Edwars' [sic] criticism assumes that is my view, it fails. That's it.

Now as far as I can tell, CLARIFICATION I amounts to this: Yes, given all that classical theism stuff, the “evil god challenge” would fail.  But suppose that classical theism is wrong and that evidential arguments for a theistic personalist god are the best we can do.   In that case the “evil god challenge” applies!

This is a little like Critic B of our imagined proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem saying “OK, but suppose the proof in question were an inductive argument.  Then my objection would be a pretty powerful challenge, huh?”  More to the point, Law’s CLARIFICATION I implicitly concedes that my criticism is correct even as Law continues to maintain that it is “awful.”  Law has here made his “evil god challenge” completely trivial: It applies to those versions of theism to which it applies.  True, but hardly interesting.

CLARIFICATION II is simply baffling.  Law tells us that most non-religious people tend to agree with him that there is overwhelming evidence against the existence of a good God, however that God is conceived.  Well, maybe they do (which would not be surprising given that they’re non-religious).  But what’s Law’s point?  Is he saying that since those people don’t buy classical theism (or any other kind of theism), they should take the “evil god challenge” seriously?  Again, that may be true, but so what?  How does that show that the “evil god challenge” applies also to classical theism?  Once again Law reduces his position to a triviality: The “evil god challenge” needs to be taken seriously by anyone who isn’t convinced by those versions of theism to which the “evil god challenge” does not apply!  Again, true, but uninteresting.

CLARIFICATION III is about as good as the following argument from Critic B of our imagined proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem:  Even if Critic A is right that the proof contains a fallacy, my point is that the proof can ALSO be ruled out on empirical grounds (which you may dispute of course).  Surely this is bloody obvious by now?  

Again, Critic B would simply show by such a statement that he doesn’t understand the difference between an attempted mathematical proof and an empirical theory.  And Law’s remarks show that he doesn’t understand the difference between a purported metaphysical demonstration of the impossibility of an evil God (in the classical theist’s sense of “God”) and empirical theorizing about whether there is a “god” in some other sense, a sense that would leave it open whether this “god” is good or evil.

Law’s “PS” to CLARIFICATION III is also baffling.  He now tells that “of course” his argument doesn’t depend on the assumption that Christians arrive at their views about God inductively based on observation of the world.  Well, in that case, he needs to answer the following question: Take a classical theist who is working with the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions described above and who claims to have a demonstrative argument to the effect that there is a God who is pure actuality or subsistent being itself and who therefore (given the background metaphysics) cannot even in principle be anything less than perfectly good.  How exactly does the “evil god challenge” pose a challenge to such a theist?

In answering, Law should remember that it will not do to say: “Well, I don’t think the doctrine of privation, the doctrine or the transcendentals, divine simplicity, etc. are correct and/or that the attempted demonstration in question is sound.”   For in that case, it will be the various specific criticisms of these various metaphysical and epistemological assumptions that will be doing the philosophical work, and not the evil god challenge itself.  He should remember also that it will not do to say: “If we don’t make these various classical theistic background assumptions in metaphysics and epistemology, then the ‘evil god challenge’ applies.”  For that is true but completely trivial.

I think we’re done here.  On the other hand, Law also tells us that a more substantive reply is forthcoming.   I guess I can wait another year.

UPDATE 11/15: For readers who haven’t already noticed, Stephen Law has now replied to this post in two blog posts of his own (here and here) and in a number of combox remarks, both below and in his own comboxes.  In response, I’ve posted a number of comments of my own down below.

386 comments:

  1. Eric,

    You wrote:

    “I don't think it's uncontroversial to say that pain and suffering in the world are evils, whatever your conception of evil, and that they provide at least prima facie evidence against the existence of a good god.”

    I don’t think you are, as yet, grasping the extent of the problem with Law’s EGC. Firstly, it is actually quite controversial to say that ALL pain and suffering in the world is “evil”. “Pain” in animals and “suffering” (the rational experience of pain) in humans, in many cases is a salutary warning, such as the child who learns, by touching a hot stove, to avoid such acts in the future. But the point is not to deny that a classical theist recognizes some forms of pain and suffering as “evil”. The point is to look closely at what the classical theist, contra Law’s background assumptions, MEANS by the term “evil” when applied to pain and suffering or any other sort of evidential data.

    You, along with Law, seem to think that so long as pain and suffering fall within one’s conception of “evil”, the specific conceptual content of “evil” which one actually affirms, becomes irrelevant to whether or not the EGC can be successfully run after bracketing the classical theist’s cosmological argument for Subsistent Being Itself. That does not follow. Whether or not pain and suffering provide “prima facie” evidence against the existence of a “good” god depends crucially upon what conceptual content one is mapping onto the terms “good” and “evil” when talking about evidence – including pain and suffering. If, after a rigorously developed PON [including a consideration of all the various forms of pain and suffering (“nature red in tooth and claw”, war, famine, etc) found within our experience], it turns out that the only way in which the term “evil” can be non-subjectively ascribed to pain and suffering is from the ontic standpoint of some or other “privation of being”; and if, likewise, the only non-subjective way to predicate “good” of things in our experience is to recognize “good” as convertible with being; THEN, given a successful argument to an ultimate reality which is pure unlimited Being; pain and suffering CANNOT be said to provide prima facie evidence against the existence of a “good” God without begging the question of the very meaning of “good” and “evil”.

    cntd . . .

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  2. cntd

    There is no metaphysically neutral position (or as Crude said “view from nowhere”) from which to assess the quality of the evidence which Law would have us assess after bracketing any cosmological arguments. So I think you are quite mistaken to think that Law need not clarify his use of the terms “good” and “evil”. What ontic status – if any – Law ascribes to these terms, is absolutely crucial for evaluating the force of the EGC against classical theism. Look again at what Law writes:

    "that won't help you avoid the evidential problem of evil, or the evil god challenge, if, for example, on your concept of good and evil, pain and suffering are still evils, and if agony inflicted for no good justifying reason still counts as a gratuitous evil."

    He is just wrong about that, because IF the predicate “evil” as applied to “pain”, “suffering” and “agony”, AFTER “pre-theoretical” analysis, turns out to entail a conceptual content wherein the ontic status of “evil” must be privation of being in some form or another, THEN the evidential problem of “evil” in relation to the claim that God is necessarily “good”, will have been avoided by anyone who successfully argues that God just is Subsistent Being Itself; where being is convertible with good, and therefore determines what the classical theist MEANS by affirming the existence of a “good” God. Again, whether or not the classical theist avoids the evidential problem of evil does NOT depend on whether or not he predicates the term “evil” of some forms of pain, suffering, agony, etc. Rather, it fundamentally depends upon what the classical theist means by the term “evil” when so predicated. To untie that knot, Law will need to offer some competing, non-subjective, account of the conceptual content (or ontic status) of “good” and “evil” predicates, beyond just nodding to some ill-defined “pre-theoretical” notions of “good” and “evil” he happens to share with some other folks.

    And of course, as I said before, there is no use complaining that the classical theist’s critical account of the conceptual content of “good” and “evil” is different from the “pre-theoretical”, “prima facie” account of “good and “evil” (whatever that is) with which Law is working. For the whole point of philosophical discourse is to move carefully and rigorously from the pre-theoretical to the post-theoretical, in order to see how much of our pre-theoretical thinking and intuitions survives the fires of critical analysis. That is exactly the kind of program which drives Law’s purposes for putting the EGC forward in the first place. He hopes, by his critical argument, to correct the pre-theoretical, prima facie notions of some theists – that is - some twerps.

    cntd . . . .

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  3. cntd

    But you seem to partly acknowledge my point when you write:

    “Now you and I would agree that after these terms are cashed out on classical theistic grounds, the situation appears quite different”

    But why in the world you think it makes sense to follow Law in attempting to evaluate the evidence before or beside having “cashed out” what the terms “good” and “evil” mean on classical theist grounds is a mystery to me. You seem to be implicitly getting snookered into Law’s hidden premise that the evidence can be evaluated according to the terms “good” and “evil” from some metaphysically neutral position. The metaphysics NECESSARILY – even for Law – comes first. Otherwise, we are all talking past each other when we use the terms “good” and “evil” in reference to the evidence.

    With these remarks in mind, allow me to comment on a few more lines from your post in order to further clarify my argument.

    You wrote:

    “I think it's important to remember how Professor Law explains the application of the EGC via the impossibility argument”

    And then you quote Law:

    “...even supposing an evil god is, for some reason X, an impossibility, we can still ask the hypothetical question: setting aside the fact that so-and-so establishes that an evil god is an impossibility, how reasonable would it otherwise be to suppose that such an evil being exists ?”

    Law acts as if the reason given (“for some reason”) for the impossibility of an evil god has no bearing on the hypothetical question he thinks can still be meaningfully asked after setting the impossibility argument aside. But that is wrong. For if the “reason” for the impossibility is that the conceptual content of the term “evil” is understood in an ontic context (according to a rigorous philosophical account of nature including the facts of various types of pain and suffering), in which “evil” just is a privation of being, then it CANNOT POSSIBLY BE REASONABLE to affirm that an “evil being exists”. For the evidence he wants the theist to now look at has ALREADY been evaluated in coming to the conclusion that predicate terms “evil” must designate a privation of being. Given the classical theist’s careful metaphysical account of the ontic meanings of “good” and “evil”; linking the word “evil” to the words “being” and “exists” in the phrase “an evil being exists” is, by definition, nonsensical.

    Law continues:

    “If the answer is ‘highly unreasonable’, i.e. because of the problem of good, then
    the evil-god challenge can still be run.”

    Again, the answer is not “highly unreasonable”, the answer is “impossible”; precisely because there is no “problem of good” to begin with. From a classical theist’s epistemic and ontic POV, whatever EXISTS is good so far as it goes. There are not so many “good” things standing next to “evil” things, such that we must weigh the ontic scales. There are only existing things which are more or less good, according to the degree in which they participate in being, or have existence. Considered ontologically, “evil” is always and everywhere a term employed to designate a lack of being.

    cntd . . .

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  4. cntd

    Law continues:

    “We can still ask theists to explain why, if they would otherwise reject the evil-god hypothesis as highly unreasonable, do they not take the same view regarding the good-god hypothesis?"

    And the answer to this question is clear. The classical theist FIRST rejects the hidden premise that evidence can be assessed from a neutral metaphysical position from which the affirmed nature (good or evil) of some purported god can be accounted as “reasonable” or “unreasonable” according to that same mythical metaphysically neutral perspective. The very use of the terms “good” and “evil”, when predicated of “evidence”, sneaks in un-voiced metaphysical assumptions. Knowing this to be the case, the classical theist goes ahead and does the hard work of philosophically appraising nature, experience, pain, suffering, etc. and asking himself what it can mean to describe various aspects of his observed experience as either “good” or “evil”. He quickly realizes that unless he can tie those predicates to some non-subjective standard, the predicates themselves become useless within philosophical discourse. So he argues to the position that such terms must be rooted in ontology, resulting in the general doctrines that “good” is convertible with being, and “evil” privation of being. Having fleshed out what he thinks is a non-subjective conceptual account of the terms “good” and “evil” (i.e. having laid his metaphysical cards on the table), he can forthrightly answer the question which Law asks.

    From the observed fact that any finite, contingent things exist (have being) at all, it can be argued that their very existence will remain unexplained unless one ultimately arrives at some unchanging, purely actual, ground of existence for all contingent, finite things - i.e. Subsistent Being Itself (which theists call God). That’s the point of cosmological arguments. From the argued account of “good” as convertible with “being”, it follows that the ultimate standard for predicating “goodness” of things must correspond to the fullness of Being, such that Subsistent Being Itself must, by argued definition, be utterly “good”. From the argued account of “evil” as privation of being, it follows that no evidential evaluation of our experience (including pain, suffering, etc) will ever yield an instance where “evil” is discovered to have any positive ontological value. And since the question of and god’s EXISTENCE is precisely a question of ontology; it follows that IF any god exists at all, god cannot, in principle, BE “evil”.

    The bottom line answer to the question of why it is unreasonable to reject the good-god hypothesis, yet reasonable to reject the evil-god hypothesis, is because careful metaphysical analysis alerts us to the fact that there is an ontological asymmetry between the predicate terms “good” and “evil”.

    cntd . . .

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  5. cntd

    Finally, you wrote:

    “That is -- and I understand this to be the key to the impossibility argument -- running the EGC via the impossibility argument *presupposes* that the theist agrees that, sans any metaphysical demonstrations, the notion of an evil god is "highly unreasonable" . . .”

    Its more basic than that. The classical theist first denies that it is possible to do things like assess the “reasonableness” (or not) of evil-god notions, without implicitly importing all kinds of metaphysical assumptions. As a good philosopher, he therefore refuses to talk about the evidential reasonableness or unreasonableness of god-predicates, from some impossible perspective outside his metaphysical commitments. He lays those commitments on the table, and opens them to evaluation and dialogue (but that conversation is not about the EGC, but rather about metaphysics). When Stephen Law asks: “how reasonable would it otherwise be . . ?”, he is acting as if that question can be answered without importing metaphysically biased notions of what the terms “good” and “evil” mean as applied to the evidential data. The classical theist openly confesses his metaphysical bias and gives the reason for them. Stephen Law has not, as yet, been forthcoming on this point. He needs to lay his metaphysical cards on the table.

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  6. Felix said...



    It would be better for Dr Law to rephrase his arguments as: "Given the empircal evidence of evil, there is no God". But that is of course, nothing new."

    Which is why half of the people commenting here assumed he was ultimately implying a modus tollens. Which he apparently contends he wasn't.

    Nor was he apparently intending to ultimately offer a formal refutation of the pro good-god argument form, by using substitution instances in order to demonstrate its logical invalidity.

    So that leaves us with an "empirical argument" which as part of its premise( as opposed to a premise) insinuates that such persons as Manichees have never existed. Or something.

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  7. @Anon
    >That DOES mean "homosexual". What, did you think it was the "happy, cheerful" meaning of "gay" that made it an insult?

    No these days it means "lame". It used to mean happy & cheerful. Then it meant homosexual. Now it means lame. That is what they say on South Park. That makes it offical then.

    >The only reason it's insulting is because homosexuality is considered perverse and deviant,

    Not really, if anything it means effeminate puffy guy sometimes come off as kind of lame & that would apply to metrosexual dudes too.

    Gay means lame. South park has spoken.

    Have a nice day.

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  8. I was tempted to make a specific critique, once more, of the problem with positing an "evil god" on equal footing with a good god––but then it dawned on me that Law's argument is methodically unfalsifiable, and that Law is in principle incapable of being argued out of it; he can only be reminded to let it go. Now, he may say that the same holds for theists, but that doesn't give him much rationalist street cred.

    His EGA amounts to the claim that all proofs for any ultimate, transcendent being, whether good or evil, are invalid, and "empirically absurd", to boot. This, however, is nothing more than boilerplate atheism! His EGA adds literally nothing to the age-old argument.

    On top of this, his formal strategy has been shown to be erroneous and question-begging, since the whole point of theistic reasoning is to make ultimate sense of the contrarieties found in nature (good and evil, potency and act, unity and plurality, cheesiness and holeyness, etc.). Theism begins with the ambiguous at which Law concludes. As has been noted ad nauseam, evil is parasitic on good, disorder on order, potency on act, and so we literally cannot speak of the former without the existence of the latter, which handily trumps things in favor of the theist as such. Hence, as has also been noted, Law gives the dimmest and briefest of explanations of evil, much less of good. It is precisely because he slumps against pre-theoretical notions of good and evil that he misses why God is utterly transcendent to moral ascription on our part, and thus entirely removed from the exhaustive unity of his will and his self-knowledge, which is to say his pure perfection as a self-ordered 'being'.

    THEIST: There is a peculiar blend of good and evil, therefore, there must be some principle of being, and all its, genuses, which grounds the actual distinction between them.

    LAW: There is a peculiar blend of good and evil, therefore, there cannot be a principle of being, and all its genuses, which grounds the actual distinction between them.

    In any event, I might as well mention the concrete refutation of a putative evil god to to which I alluded above:

    An entirely evil god EEG (i.e. an entirely imperfect being) would have to lack all semblance of being-ordered-towards-an-end. If EEG lacked this character, however, none of its actions would be ordered to their effects, and therefore it could never effect anything. Moreover, if all of EEG's 'internal properties'––[we see again how Law's analytic myopia mangles theism]––lacked any perfection (i.e. intrinsic directionality-towards) with respect to its own nature, then EEG could not even subsist as a single god. This is why I think Law's EGA just collapses into the Humean argument against the one true God based on the observed antinomy of unity and plurality in the world. Why he doesn't run that argument, is beyond me.

    Time for another shot?

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  9. Monk68 said,


    "There is no metaphysically neutral position (or as Crude said “view from nowhere”) from which to assess the quality of the evidence which Law would have us assess after bracketing any cosmological arguments. So I think you are quite mistaken to think that Law need not clarify his use of the terms “good” and “evil”. What ontic status – if any – Law ascribes to these terms, is absolutely crucial for evaluating the force of the EGC against classical theism. Look again at what Law writes:

    'that won't help you avoid the evidential problem of evil, or the evil god challenge, if, for example, on your concept of good and evil, pain and suffering are still evils, and if agony inflicted for no good justifying reason still counts as a gratuitous evil.' "


    As you and others have well pointed out right from the beginning, Law's challenge relies on what he states in his own defense, is in effect an un-reflective pre-theoretical man in the street definition of pain as evil.


    Except that it may not necessarily be pain per se that is evil, but the cosmic presence off so much unjustified agony.


    Or, "... agony inflicted for no good justifying reason ..."

    Which, "...counts as a gratuitous evil."

    "Unjustified agony"

    and of all things then,

    "gratuitous evil"?

    But all still putatively pre-theoretical and therefore requiring no explanation of any hidden metaphysical assumptions regarding the status of pain and the definition of evil before validating the imagined parallels.

    Right ...

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  10. CC:

    "Theism begins with the ambiguous at which Law concludes"

    That is excellent.

    One of the themes of Dr. Feser's blog seems to be that many atheists, especially the New atheists, when they claim to have the answers, haven't yet discovered the questions.

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  11. DNW

    You wrote:

    "But all still putatively pre-theoretical and therefore requiring no explanation of any hidden metaphysical assumptions regarding the status of pain and the definition of evil before validating the imagined parallels."

    That is fine, of course no one can force him to move his argument beyond the "pre-theoretical" threshold and produce a credible metaphysical account of his terms. But that would seem to mean that his argument will only have force with those theists who share his pre-theoretical notions concerning what is meant by describing agony as "evil" (and how does agony differ from pain and suffering), or what he might mean by "gratuitious evil", "justifying", etc.

    But would that not entail an admission that the EGC has no force at all against the well developed, post-theoretical, metaphysical account of "good" and "evil" championed by classical theists which has been developed through a process which already takes into account notions of pain, suffering, agony, justfication, etc.?

    But as far as I can tell, Law has never stopped insisting that his EGC can still be meaningfully run, despite classical theistic PON, ontology, metaphysics, etc. I claim it cannot. There is no "setting aside" the classical theist position to hypothetically look at something else "outside" of it, because that position has already "packaged" - so to speak - the evidence he thinks still has some force. He could certainly challenge the PON, ontology, metaphysics, etc. which underwrites the classical theist's account of "good" and "evil" predicates; but that, ISTM, is a very different challenge from the EGC.

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  12. David,

    Yep, that is an excellent quote.

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  13. [Was this comment lost when I first tried to post it?]

    I was tempted to make a specific critique, once more, of the problem with positing an "evil god" on equal footing with a good god––but then it dawned on me that Law's argument is methodically unfalsifiable, and that Law is in principle incapable of being argued out of it; he can only be reminded to let it go. Now, he may say that the same holds for theists, but that doesn't give him much rationalist street cred.

    His EGA amounts to the claim that all proofs for any ultimate, transcendent being, whether good or evil, are invalid, and "empirically absurd", to boot. This, however, is nothing more than boilerplate atheism! His EGA adds literally nothing to the age-old argument.

    On top of this, his formal strategy has been shown to be erroneous and question-begging, since the whole point of theistic reasoning is to make ultimate sense of the contrarieties found in nature (good and evil, potency and act, unity and plurality, cheesiness and holeyness, etc.). Theism begins with the ambiguous at which Law concludes. As has been noted ad nauseam, evil is parasitic on good, disorder on order, potency on act, and so we literally cannot speak of the former without the existence of the latter, which handily trumps things in favor of the theist as such. Hence, as has also been noted, Law gives the dimmest and briefest of explanations of evil, much less of good. It is precisely because he slumps against pre-theoretical notions of good and evil that he misses why God is utterly transcendent to moral ascription on our part, and thus entirely removed from the exhaustive unity of his will and his self-knowledge, which is to say his pure perfection as a self-ordered 'being'.

    THEIST: There is a peculiar blend of good and evil, therefore, there must be some principle of being, and all its, genuses, which grounds the actual distinction between them.

    LAW: There is a peculiar blend of good and evil, therefore, there cannot be a principle of being, and all its genuses, which grounds the actual distinction between them.

    In any event, I might as well mention the concrete refutation of a putative evil god to to which I alluded above:

    An entirely evil god EEG (i.e. an entirely imperfect being) would have to lack all semblance of being-ordered-towards-an-end. If EEG lacked this character, however, none of its actions would be ordered to their effects, and therefore it could never effect anything. Moreover, if all of EEG's 'internal properties'––[we see again how Law's analytic myopia mangles theism]––lacked any perfection (i.e. intrinsic directionality-towards) with respect to its own nature, then EEG could not even subsist as a single god. This is why I think Law's EGA just collapses into the Humean argument against the one true God based on the observed antinomy of unity and plurality in the world. Why he doesn't run that argument, is beyond me.

    Time for another shot?

    ReplyDelete
  14. "Pot Meets Kettle said...

    DNW,

    "But Stephen, thanks all the same for revealing the emotional driving force behind your little project."

    Are you serious?"

    Sure, I was just acknowledging what Law had announced as his motivations for constructing his argument in the first place.



    " I've witnessed plenty of "emotional" arguments and back handed "opinions" directed at the evil stupid athiests in this combox."

    I was not referring to Law's arguments in Feser's comboxes as being emotional, nor as being based on appeals to emotion. I was noting that he seemingly admits the construction of his argument was driven by an emotional reaction he had, rather than by a mere intellectual observation.

    And too since the insinuation makes it relevant, I might as well go on record as saying that I am not a convinced theist, and that I do not have an intellectual problem with non-belief as non-belief.

    I just am mystified as to why so many atheists seem to simperingly assume social collectivism follows as a principle from atheism, or that their deconstruction of man somehow shouldn't immediately apply to them and to any potential evaluation outside observers might make of them.

    It's that odd fragrance from what they declare an empty bottle, but which they keep peddling nonetheless, that mystifies me.

    But maybe the logical problem many of us see, can be answered with some kind of ramified theory of types response, rather than (and I am speaking non-specifically here) by supercilious academic poses from physically flabby ironists receiving an institutional paycheck, eh?


    " First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
    November 16, 2011 7:44 AM"

    Yeah, now about that; and just between us atheists. This whole "brotherhood" line of BS ...

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  15. DNW,

    Just to clarify, if Law were willing to concede, what I think he must concede regarding the force of the EGC, so long as it is remains built on pre-theoretical notions, then I think most of the discussion here would done.

    He could rest satisfied with an argument that rebutts the notions held by some theists, but not metaphysically astute classical theists.

    Or else he could press in against the classical theist's PON or metaphysics - which would be a much more interesting discussion but, of course, much more difficult and drawn out)

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  16. I guess my comment made it.

    ERRATUM 1 of ?:

    "…and thus entirely removed from MORAL CONDEMNATION BY the exhaustive unity of his will and his self-knowledge, which is to say BY his pure perfection as a self-ordered 'being'."

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  17. monk68 said...

    DNW

    You wrote:

    "But all still putatively pre-theoretical and therefore requiring no explanation of any hidden metaphysical assumptions regarding the status of pain and the definition of evil before validating the imagined parallels."

    That is fine, of course no one can force him to move his argument beyond the "pre-theoretical" threshold and produce a credible metaphysical account of his terms. But that would seem to mean that his argument will only have force with those theists who share his pre-theoretical notions concerning what is meant by describing agony as "evil" (and how does agony differ from pain and suffering), or what he might mean by "gratuitious evil", "justifying", etc.

    But would that not entail an admission that the EGC has no force at all against the well developed, post-theoretical, metaphysical account of "good" and "evil" championed by classical theists which has been developed through a process which already takes into account notions of pain, suffering, agony, justfication, etc.?"

    My answer to you is yes, yes, and I grant you yes.

    I'll have to learn how to convey the mild sarcasm I was characterizing Law's position with, in a more effective fashion.

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  18. monk68 said...

    DNW,

    Just to clarify, if Law were willing to concede, what I think he must concede regarding the force of the EGC, so long as it is remains built on pre-theoretical notions, then I think most of the discussion here would done.

    He could rest satisfied with an argument that rebutts the notions held by some theists, but not metaphysically astute classical theists.

    Or else he could press in against the classical theist's PON or metaphysics - which would be a much more interesting discussion but, of course, much more difficult and drawn out)

    November 16, 2011 9:24 AM"

    Yes I agree, and I think that almost everybody here who disagrees with the adequacy of Law's arguments would.

    Most of us have been making somewhat similar observations from slightly different angles, and, exploring what we thought would be the logical implications (e.g., the 'why don't you just go straight to the modus tollens?' kind of references several have made) involved in taking his argument or its premisses at face value.

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  19. DNW,

    No, I'm just slow on the uptake sometimes.

    Cheers

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  20. Felix,

    But that's not really fair, since Law is using something that, in theory, remotely associates with the qualifiers of "good" and "evil" in descriptions of "good God" and "evil God". "Half-fulfilling" does ot mean "half-existent".

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  21. If I understand the Evil God Challenge, it seems to go something like this:

    1) Common defenses of a benevolent god against the problem of evil can be repurposed, often with little modification, to the defense of a malevolent god against the problem of good. (From prior arguments.)

    2) If the standard theodicies successfully overcome the problem of evil, then the reverse theodicies successfully overcome the problem of good. (A fuzzy implication of 1.)

    3) But the reverse theodicies do not overcome the problem of good. (Assumption.)

    4( Thus the standard theodicies do not overcome the problem of evil. (2, 3, modus tollens.)

    It’s a consistency argument. If you believe that the problem of good establishes the nonexistence of a malevolent god, then you should believe that the problem of evil establishes the nonexistence of a benevolent god. But even aside from the arguments about whether or not the challenge applies to classical theism, I must echo others and wonder about the reasonableness of of (3): why must we simply agree that the problem of good is troublesome for a malevolent god?

    From a rhetorical perspective, consider the intention of a theist who argues against the problem of evil. He is not (strictly speaking) offering a positive argument for his god; he is on the defense; he claims “My belief religious belief remains secure because the problem of evil doesn’t work.” Presumably he has other reasons for belief than failure of the problem of evil (it would be bizarre if not).

    So: of what importance is it to the theist whether or not the problem of good disproves an evil god? At best the Evil God Challenge seems to show that, when such a theist encounters a believer in an Evil God, the theist should not employ the problem of good as a counterargument. With respect, that doesn’t seem very profound.

    (As to whether the Evil God Challenge even applies to classical theism, well, I can sort of see Law’s point. Even if an evil god is impossible, we can — as long as we hold to the intuitive layman’s understanding of good and evil — consider whether the problem of good would be enough on its own to disprove that god. And if that’s the case, the argument I outlined above can proceed.

    The more intractable problem is what to make of the Challenge vis-à-vis frameworks in which an evil god is not merely impossible but utterly incoherent. If an evil god just doesn’t make sense then premise (1) can’t make sense, either!)

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  22. @Codgitator (Cadgertator):

    Minor quibble:

    "As has been noted ad nauseam, evil is parasitic on good, disorder on order, potency on act, and so we literally cannot speak of the former without the existence of the latter, which handily trumps things in favor of the theist as such."

    I do not think it is correct to say that potency is parasitic on act (although it is correct to say that is is a different and lesser mode of being between actuality and nothing). Here is Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange on Reality: A Thomistic synthesis, chapter 5:

    "The great commentators often note that the definition of potency determines the Thomistic synthesis. When potency is conceived as really distinct from all act, even the least imperfect, then we have the Thomistic position. If, on the other hand, potency is conceived as an imperfect act, then we have the position of some Scholastics, in particular of Suarez, and especially of Leibnitz, for whom potency is a force, a virtual act, merely impeded in its activity, as, for example, in the restrained force of a spring.

    This conceptual difference in the primordial division of created being into potency and act has far-reaching consequences, which it is our task to pursue.

    Many authors of manuals of philosophy ignore this divergence and give hardly more than nominal definitions of potency and act. They offer us the accepted axioms, but they do not make clear why it is necessary to admit potency as a reality between absolute nothing and actually existing being. Nor do they show how and wherein real potency is distinguished, on the one hand, from privation and simple possibility, and on the other from even the most imperfect act."

    verification word: pills

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  23. rad here,

    I have skimmed Laws paper and tried to formalise his argument. Here is my try:

    What Law calls a good god and an evil god, I simply call God and evil god respectively.

    I take a theodicy to be a deduction from a set of basic assumptions (to be more precise: it is a list of sentences of which every sentence is either an axiom or a basic assumption or a conclusion of the previous sentences.). Lets call this set B. The goal of a theodicy is to establish, that the evil in the world is compatible with Gods existence.

    It is successful if it can produce a deduction from the set of basic assumptions B which proves that the two propositions: "There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are consistent. I take a set of sentences to be consistent if there is a possible world in which the sentences are true.

    In other words: If a theodicy is successful it establishes that:

    B|- "There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are consistent.

    (X|-Y means Y can be deduced from X, (or: there is a list of sentences etc...)

    1: If (B|-"There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are consistent) then (B|-"There is good in the world" and "There is an evil God" are consistent)

    In Words: If there is a deduction from the set of basic assumptions that proves the consistency of God and the existence of evil, then there is deduction that proves the consistency of an evil god and and the existence of good.

    The second central claim of the EGC is
    2: that the existence of good in the world and the existence of an evil god are not consistent.

    Now, assuming (3) all propositions in the set B to be true, it follows that there can be no deduction from B that proves that: "There is good in the world" and "There is an evil God" are consistent. That is
    4: (B|-"There is good in the world" and "There is an evil God" are consistent) is false.

    From 3 and 1 it follows that 5: (B|-"There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are consistent) is false. In other words there can be no succesful theodicy for God.

    But this by itself would not prove that God does not exist. It would merely prove we cannot know from B whether the existence of God is compatible with evil or not. We need one further assumption to make an argument out of this against the existence of God. So lets assume that
    6: if B entails that "There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are consistent, then we could also deduce it from B.


    In formulas: If (B=>"There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are consistent) => (B|-"There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are consistent) is false.)

    Indeed, the Catholic Church implies as much, when it teaches that the existence of God can be known with certainty from reason, if B stands here for the basic assumptions of reason. By implication this would show the compatibility of God and evil. A proof for the existence of God is also a proof for the compatility of him and evil.

    From this and from 6 we can conclude that
    7: "There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are not consistent.

    Since 8: There is evil in the world, there 9: cannot possibly be a God.


    Rest is here: http://radomir-pestow.blogspot.com/2011/11/evil-god-challenge.html

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  24. Correction:

    Premiss 6 should read:

    6: [...] In formulas: If (B=>"There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are consistent) => (B|-"There is evil in the world" and "There is a God" are consistent))

    (Without the "is fals")

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  25. Stephen,

    I think your post at 1:06 AM has been the best and clearest so far (excepting the apparent burst of frustration at the end).

    I also think it highlights some of the main areas of confusion. So allow me to try and point out some of the communication barriers, as I see them. For example you say this:

    I am not attempting to stalemate evidential arguments for a good god. You are still misrepresent the challange.

    And then a minute later say this:

    However, the challenge is not an argument for that view, it's simply a challenge to explain why belief in a good god is significantly more reasonable than belief in an evil god… it reveals that many of the arguments for god are no less arguments for an evil god

    What you say in the second quote just is what Dr. Feser means about “stalemating” the arguments for a good god. So, if there is confusion at this point it is warranted. You deny doing what Feser says one second and then claim to be doing exactly that the next. The second quote implies that you are trying to stalemate arguments for a good god by saying that they work equally well to argue for an evil god. You say it is a challenge to explain why belief in a good god is any better than belief in a evil god given that the argument can just be inversed as the EGC does.

    Your point about theodicy is, I think, the more important and I’m not sure it has been directly addressed. Just as the arguments for a good god can be countered by the EGC so too can the theodicies:

    … and that many of the standard theistic explanations for evil work just as well (in defence of a evil god) as explanations of good

    So, in short, the EGC is also an attempt to counter theodicies by showing that they can be switched around to defend an evil god.


    In a nutshell, it seems to me that the point of the EGC is that a good god and an evil god are on an epistemic par, since the arguments for a good god can be used to argue an evil one and the theodicies for a good god can be used to defend an evil god, etc. And thus, so far as evidential arguments go, there is no reason to accept a good god over a bad one and the same reasons to deny both. That is, granting that the arguments work both ways, if one concludes that the evidential argument against an evil god is sufficient to refute its existence, then one should also agree that the evidential arguments against a good god are sufficient to refute its existence.

    What I would like to do then is point out some reasons why this doesn’t work given classical theism. Classical theists usually reject the kind of evidential arguments you are rebutting. What’s more, the arguments that they do use (for reasons Feser has tried to explain) cannot be so inversed given evil as privation, etc. So far as the arguments for God’s existence go, then, the classical theist has no reason to believe that a good god and an evil god are on an epistemic par. And how could they? Any strength in the EGC with regard to arguments for god’s existence lies in the EGC’s ability to reverse these arguments in support of an evil god.

    This is just to speak of the arguments for the existence of God though. The theodicy issue is distinct. If the EGC can show that the justifications for why a good god would allow evil apply equally to why an evil god would allow good, have these theodicies been rebutted?

    continued...

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  26. Continued from above:


    I don’t think so. First, the EGC doesn’t show that these tehodicies fail in any way. It doesn’t show, for example, that a good god would not allow certain evils for the reasons Feser gave and you alluded to. It just states that since we reject these theodicies applied to an evil god we ought also to reject them when applied to a good god since they are on a par. Whether these explanations are legitimate explanations or not is secondary to the supposed parity the EGC demonstrates between an evil god and a good god.

    But, in that case, these explanations of why a good god would allow evil might well be good arguments even if they would be equally strong in defense of an evil god. Thus, if a classical theist has independent reasons to think that the existence of a good god is not on an epistemic par with the existence of an evil god, and no further reason has been given to demonstrate that these theodicies fail, then the EGC fails even to refute the theodicies. The classical theist has reasons to believe in a good god which cannot be reversed by the EGC. He also has reasons to believe a good god would allow suffering. And that’s all he needs.

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  27. I fondly remember writing a critical response to one of Stephen Law's posts on his blog, to which I received I no response. Glad to see this fool is still writing his hateful nonsense. If one assumes that evil is privation (which Law never will, just like postmodern fools will never admit to there being an objective truth), then there would be no contingent beings, or, at the very least, animals who can feel happiness. Besides, I think it makes sense to conceive of God as the sum of all perfections, in which case it makes sense to attribute necessary existence to a good God.
    P.S. The problem of evil, at least concerning human evil, was handled quite nicely by Alvin Plantinga in a little book entitled God, Freedom, and Evil. Then again, Law has probably never heard of Plantinga (he probably believes there has been only one philosopher after the death of Bertrand Russell who goes by the name Richard Dawkins. Or does he think of Dawkins as a superhero? It really is so hard to see where atheist skepticism ends and where pagan nonsense begins).

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  28. James,

    You wrote:

    "Even if an evil god is impossible, we can — as long as we hold to the intuitive layman’s understanding of good and evil — consider whether the problem of good would be enough on its own to disprove that god"

    The problem is that the classical theist's specific impossibility argument embodies an explicit rejection of vague, intuitive understandings of “good” and “evil”. So there is no "so long as we hold to . . ." worth holding. Intuitive notions of good and evil have already been evaluated and chiseled into a coherent, non-subjective, ontological account of “good” and “evil”. The classical theist’s impossibility argument has been constructed precisely upon that post-theoretical account. That's why, from a classical theistic POV, it makes no sense to say:

    "Even if an evil god is impossible, we can — as long as we hold to the intuitive layman’s understanding of good and evil — consider whether the problem of good would be enough on its own to disprove that god"

    And that is why the EGC - as it is currently constructed - is no good against classical theism. Classical theists are interested in philosophical, not psychological analysis. If Law hopes to see the EGC through, as any sort of challenge to classical theism, he will have to upgrade his EGC argument by doing away with intuitive notions of “good” and “evil”, and reconstructing the argument on some non-subjective conception of “good” and “evil” predicates which undermines the classical theist’s ontic approach to the same. Specifically, he will need to attack the privation view of evil.

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  29. So far I'm understand all this, this four questions to Ed Feser are sufficient to get this to the main point:

    1) First, forget that you have arguments for classical theism. Now, reply this: the "inverses theodicies" offered in favour of an Evil Creator (forget the term "Evil God") makes his existence compatible with the good of the world?

    2) If they indeed are compatible, would you consider, however, that the amount of the good of the world is enough to make his existence empirically "improbable"? (Remember: you dont have others arguments. Just this variable "amount of the good" to count).

    3) If the answer of (2) is "yes", the situation of a Good Creator, inducting (inversely) only from the amount of evil, would be parallel (i.e., empirically improbable)?

    4) If (3) is true, then how you justify your belief in a Good Creator? (Now you are "allowed" to say, of course: "Because I have an independent argument that makes the veracity of (3) irrelevant" and bring back the arguments of classical theism).

    After consideration, this seems to me what Stephen Law is proposing. From my part, I would say (1) Yes, they are compatible; (2) No, they are not rule out on empirical grounds (see the collection "The Evidential Argument From Evil", by Daniel Howard-Snyder). Because of (2), I cannot answer (3) (but I dont think the existence of a good creator is falsified either on empirical grounds). And in favour of (4) there are many arguments: for the theistic personalist, the swinburnean case that an omnipotent and omniscient being is simpler (and therefore, more probable) and necessarily good , the Moral Argument of Craig or the Ontological Argument of Plantinga (which includes "moral perfection"), etc. For the classical theist, the demonstration of pure being plus background metaphysics seems to me be to be sufficient too. If I were a theist, I would argue in this line.

    But now let's see Mr. Feser's response, in the case that he thinks that my summary is right. (Of course, Mr. Law can correct me If i was wrong in any step).

    Best wishes,

    M.

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  30. @monk68:

    “The classical theist’s impossibility argument has been constructed precisely upon that post-theoretical account.”

    I would say instead that classical theism doesn’t offer an impossibility argument so much as an incoherence argument, mentioned in my final paragraph. (I could probably have phrased all of that better.) Within that framework an evil god isn’t merely impossible but it doesn’t make sense — positing an evil god is like positing a fnarfled bambilicuddy, not like positing that I could lift three tons, which is conceivable but impossible.

    But on some other theistic framework, in which an evil god is conceivable but nevertheless determined on some grounds to be impossible, this impossibility wouldn’t be fatal to the Challenge.

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  31. Mateus said...

    So far I'm understand all this, this four questions to Ed Feser are sufficient to get this to the main point:

    1) First, forget that you have arguments for classical theism. Now, reply this: the "inverses theodicies" offered in favour of an Evil Creator (forget the term "Evil God") makes his existence compatible with the good of the world?

    2) If they indeed are compatible, would you consider, however, that the amount of the good of the world is enough to make his existence empirically "improbable"? (Remember: you dont have others arguments. Just this variable "amount of the good" to count).

    3) If the answer of (2) is "yes", the situation of a Good Creator, inducting (inversely) only from the amount of evil, would be parallel (i.e., empirically improbable)?

    4) If (3) is true, then how you justify your belief in a Good Creator? (Now you are "allowed" to say, of course: "Because I have an independent argument that makes the veracity of (3) irrelevant" and bring back the arguments of classical theism)."


    That was nicely stated, and probably fair to Law, insofar as it by implication even credits his evil-god arguments with more good-god argument symmetry than Law seemingly insists on.

    If it wasn't a fair paraphrase, then I admit that I for one really do have no idea of what it was that he meant to argue *even on his own terms*.

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  32. Sorry, but I'm failing to see exactly what is going on here. If I "get" the ECG, it goes more or less like this (in probabilistic terms):

    Let E be the evil that exists in the world and b(X) an indicator function which evaluates to true iff X is benevolent, false otherwise. A theodicy T is a statement that, if successful,

    P(G ∧ b(G) | E ∧ T) > P(G ∧ b(G) | E).

    So, the claim of the ECG is that, given B —the good that exists in the world— and a similar indicator function e(X) for X's malevolence, it is possible to take any theodicy T and construct a reverse theodicy T' such that:

    P(G ∧ e(G) | B ∧ T') > P(G ∧ e(G) | B).

    And it follows that:
    P(G ∧ e(G) | B ∧ T') = P(G ∧ b(G) | E ∧ T).

    Now, my problems with this:

    1. For the "theodicy reversal" procedure to apply in a general case, some logical relationships between E and B and e(X) and g(X) must hold. I don't know exactly which ones, but anyone who wants to state them should start with the facts that there is both good and evil in the world, and that ¬e(X) doesn't imply that b(X). How is this done?

    2. From what I understand, the classical theist objection is that the statement G ∧ e(G) is contradictory, because there are solid arguments that show that G → b(G) is true, so the ECG is incoherent within this context. This is fine, again, as long as we have a clear understanding of the relationship between e(X) and b(X). How does the understanding of "evil as a privation" fit in here?

    Help!

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  33. man with a computer,

    Interesting question (1). What I take you to be saying is that the EGC assumes that there is a symmetry between rejecting Anti-God based on the good, and rejecting God based on the evil. Dr Law just takes it to be obvious that if we're allowed to reject the former based on the good we ought to reject the latter based on the evil. I'd like to know more about why this symmetry is supposed to hold because it's not as obvious to me that it does.

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  34. James,

    Sure "incoherence argument" works for me and more accuratley describes the situation. I just used impossibility in keeping with Law's terminology because Law keeps treating the classical theist position as if it were like some other impossibility argument rather than the incoherence argument that it actually is.

    Cheers

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  35. I think that we are failing to make an important distinction: the classical theist does not take the position that there is sufficient good or evil in the world to render a good or evil God possible or impossible by pretheoretical empirical observation; rather, the classical theist finds such pretheoretical evidence inherently ambiguous and not sufficient to determine the nature of God. Because classical theists never run a pretheoretical evidential argument for a good God, Law's critique fails.

    Furthermore, the classical theist has no reason to bracket his arguments and weigh these matters pretheoretically. Would Law ask an astronomer to bracket his knowledge about space and ask, based on pretheoretical and prescientific knowledge, if space was a vacuum or populated by ether? Of course not! All the classical theist has to then do is refuse to run his argument under pretheoretical terms, insisting that a metaphysical framework that defines good and evil and God is superior to one that does not.

    At best, such pretheoretical evidential arguments are subjective and intuitive, which is why the classical theist does not run them.

    Now, to ask, as Anonymous does with Ben, if everyone were sent straight to Hell for all eternity, would that be evidence enough is problematical--no such evidence exists to our knowledge and thus cannot be considered as part of an account. Secondly, even if such evidence did exist, the account it provides could only be subjective and intuitive, not dispositive, because it still deals with pretheoretical notions of good and evil, rather than metaphysically defined categories.

    In other words, the best the evidence can do is provide an intuitive response to the challenge, not an objective ruling.

    Lastly and perhaps even more importantly, allow me to add a Nietzschean spin to this challenge: unless God is presupposed to exist, there can be no talk of good and evil because those concepts are rooted in metaphysical and theological categories that cannot be presupposed under pretheoretical notions. Instead, the pretheoretical agnostic only has recourse to the terms "good" and "bad." These terms are ambiguous and intuitive, in reference only to the subject and their historical community and language game, not anything absolute.

    In other words, the very positing of good and evil as categories presupposes the existence of God. This completely renders the challenge incoherent. Claiming that the terms "good" and "evil" are left undefined will not simply do--the very use of such words imports categories of specific metaphysical content. Law needs to read Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals to dispossess himself of these ontological notions.

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  36. I'd like to hear more about this Evil God who parallels the Good God. The good God is good through and through; good to others, good to himself, good to everything. Is the Evil God similarly evil to everything? Evil to others... and evil to himself?

    If he is evil to himself does he frustrate his desires the way he frustrates the desires of his creatures? But since he desires to do evil to his creatures, would he then do good to them as a means of being evil to himself? And since the maximum of evil is to destroy something, does he destroy himself? Or is he good to himself but evil to everything else?

    The good God has no problem being thoroughly good. He is simply good. But the evil God - and I've only just started to list the incoherencies - tangles himself up in logical problems trying to be evil.

    There is no parallel between a good God and an evil God. The latter is simply incoherent.

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  37. Monte,

    Yes. What I meant is that the relationships between the good and evil in the world and the statements "X is good" and "X is evil" are non-obvious. But they are necessary in order to have a general procedure that can reverse any theodicy so that the EGC may hold WLOG. Notice that I am not asking for precise definitions of good and evil, but for the relationships between those two notions. Dr. Law says that we can appeal to the popular understanding, but I don't see exactly how that clarifies the issue.

    Claiming that those relationships are irrelevant and that all one has to do is swap the terms on any theodicy argument and run them through the EGC is pretty cheap in my opinion (note: I'm not accusing Dr. Law of this), because it is equivalent to assuming that some trivial kind of symmetry between good and evil holds, which is probably not true.

    P.S.: typo in my previous post, "EGC," not "ECG." Apologies.

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  38. To expand on that last point, Law has no grounds to equate evil with pain. Again, evil is a word with origins in theistic, specifically Judeo-Christian, language game. To use this word invokes this meaning. It cannot be used neutrally and in an undefined way. To do so is to smuggle in a postheoretical category that presupposes the existence of God. Instead, to speak of intuitive and subjective evaluations of experience limits the agnostic to the terms "good" and "bad." "Bad" then becomes whatever is rejected by the subject and/or his culture. For Law, this is pain. For the Aztecs, not sacrificing a person to Quetzalcoatl is bad. To do good would necessitate pain. Thus the prevention of pain in this instance is bad.

    Leaving the term "evil" in the challenge while claiming that "evil" is undefined won't do. So let us go further and fix the challenge for Law. It is now to be called the "Bad God Challenge." It goes like this: theists say there is awesome stuff in the world to like and that this is evidence that God exists, but there's also stuff in the world I don't like, like pain. I don't think a good God would allow me to feel icky, so God is either just as likely to be bad or doesn't exist.

    The classical theist can respond: we don't make such judgments based upon intuitive evaluations of "good" and "bad," we have metaphysical categories of "good" as interchangeable with being and "evil" as a privation of the "good." There is no need to speak intuitively in terms of a position of ignorance when there is a framework that is well defined that can be arrived at by a rigorous philosophy of nature. Furthermore, because there is a distinction between good/bad, with its pretheoretical notions, and Good/Evil, with its defined categories, there is no reason that these have to parallel. What Law considers "bad,"pain, could actually be "Good" and opposed to "Evil" under the classical theists understanding of these things.

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  39. Professor Feser and Monk68, thanks for your comments. I'm rereading Professor Law's paper and some of the discussion about it both here and on Professor Law's blog before I respond. For now, I can't say that I disagree with much that either of you said.

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  40. Eric,

    If you can, take a look at my last two comments. You will see that the Evil God Challenge makes it impossible to bracket our theoretical notions and assume a pretheoretical posture because it assumes that evil exists, which is NOT a pretheoretical and neutral word.

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  41. Crude: One problem I have with a response like this is that it suggests we've A) gone and tallied up all the good and all the evil in the world, B) figured out what amount of evil would be too much to justify a good god's existence, and what amount of good would be too much to justify an evil god's existence, and C) reasonably determined that an omnipotent, omniscient good/evil god would never create what we see, because D) they both are present in amounts equally past some threshold.

    Verbose Stoic; Alternatively, one can accept that that evidence is ambiguous in general and look at the specific evidence they have for God (their holy books, for example). In no case is this any real sort of challenge except to those who eliminate an evil god by saying that there's too much good in the world for there to be an evil god. But no one has to do that.

    dguller: You mention that “many” of the “arguments” and “explanations” for a good God would equally work for an evil God.
    Fine.
    “Many” is not “all”, though. Perhaps the “many” arguments that you are referring to are of a personalist God rather than a classical theist God. I don’t think anyone was saying that your challenge did not apply to any God, but only that it did not apply to the classical theist God.


    Dr. Law, your argument is just bad logic. The fact that many arguments for a good god are based on the evidence regarding good in the world, and that many of THESE can be re-phrased in such a way that they appear to be similarly "reasonable" arguments for showing that the evil in the world is evidence for an evil god, cannot be used to conclude anything formally about "arguments from empirical good about a good god" at all, much less anything universally about "arguments about a good god".

    First, because in reality the "arguments for a good god" based on the empirical evidence of good never were anything but probable arguments to begin with, and as a result the "similar" reverse arguments for an evil god won't be anything stronger than probable arguments as well. In fact, the evidence is, internally, AMBIGUOUS and is not conclusive. From that sort of evidence you cannot get to a conclusion: Yet an evil god remains empirically absurd. It isn't. The evidence suggests that perhaps there is not an evil god, and people who follow the evidence will doubt the possibility of an evil god, but nobody can realistically say that based on the empirical evidence alone, without other arguments, an evil god is absurd. You are effectively trying to set up a Kantian antinomy, and it works just as poorly as Kant's did. Kant was wrong about the antinomies, and your reverse theory is wrong too.

    Second, for your argument to be rigorous you would have to show formally, that is IN VERY STRUCTURE, any POSSIBLE argument for a good god based on empirical good in the world is subject to a similar angle for evil leading to an evil god conclusion. You have not even attempted to show that. You give example after example of reverse-type arguments. That is precisely as useful, logically, as taking example after example of 2 items and 3 items and showing that added together you get 5 items, and claiming that this "shows" that 2 + 3 = 5. Well, it shows nothing of the kind, as a universal principle. It only shows it in circumstantial cases. (Only, in your situation, you have only provided probable arguments to begin with).

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  42. Eric, consider this:

    Euclid proves that given certain premises, it follows that the angles in a triangle equal 2 right angles, he does so as a universal demonstration. Socrates comes along and says "no no, I don't understand your proof, and the empirical evidence is a problem: every time we measure a triangle we get anywhere from 175 degrees to 185 degrees, so based on the empirical evidence you now have an "extra super duper heavy burden of proof" to show your demonstration works with strength and clarity. The "empirical evidence" is a challenge. Euclid rightly and properly says: whatever information you have from the empirical evidence, the demonstration is a proof, and proof JUST IS "with strength and clarity". Thus, you must ask yourself questions like "do I have good enough tools to find the answer I am looking for empirically, and am I sure that the answer I am getting actually speaks to the matter of the demonstration?"

    To ask Euclid for more than that proof is to ask for logic and deduction to do more than deduce correctly, you are asking them to convince the stupid, the careless, the muddled, and the dogmatic logical skeptic. That's not their job.

    Secondly, as many above have said, Law doesn't even make a particularly strong case, himself, that the evidential argument is definite rather than probable. As a result, you have Law's argument presented in probable form trying to "shift a burden of proof" upon the formal demonstration, a burden that it inherently meets because it IS a demonstration rather than a probable argument.

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  43. DNW, that is a fair summary of Law's argument. That is, of his original argument. Now that it is shown to be useless about classical theism, he wishes it were a somewhat different argument. In trying to re-invent it so that it "speaks to" classical theism's God, he either muddles it on its own, or confuses it with the "problem of evil" as such. He also seems to be absolutely deaf to the fact that the theist need not be convinced that the empirical evidence leads firmly toward a good god, toward an evil god, or to anything at all conclusively. All the debater needs to do to defeat Law's argument is to say: the empirical evidence from good and evil is inconclusive in itself, no results are possible.

    It's like saying: the fact that my pen drops when I release it is inconclusive evidence toward either A or B or C, where each is one of the competing theories of quantum physics. Given that the empirical evidence proposed is simply inconclusive, no meta-theory about the "structure of arguments for A as opposed to B and vice versa" need have any merit whatsoever. An argument about the argument, in the absence of an actual proof in the empirical realm (like A is consistent with a new experiment which invalidates B and C), is empty air, reserved for philosophers who don't know how philosophy relates to reality and to science.

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  44. "since [in Law's argument] good is so trivially defined as to render it useless as a "pointer" to some larger domain of being, which might more meaningfully be envisioned as underlying or conditioning whatever sensation is interpreted as pleasing or not pleasing."

    Yeah it's difficult to see how what is merely personal preference, desire, pleasure, or satisfaction rises to the level of arbitrating grand universals.

    But maybe personal preferences, desires, pleasures, and satisfactions are actually invisible cognitive friends trying to tell us The Ultimate Universal Truth, so that we in turn can tell the world, and thus save the world from big bad Evil, which reminds us to believe in Lord NoGod like we should and ought and are obligated by the same scientific commandments that brought us penicillin and paper towels.

    And all doubters must be reported for being unscientific and therefore Evil. Do it for science!

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  45. Stephen,

    Others have already pointed out what’s wrong with your latest remarks (at 1:10 AM, Nov. 16). But some comments: You write:

    I am not attempting to stalemate evidential arguments for a good god. You are still misrepresent the challange.

    But then, as commenter Alyosha noted above, you almost immediately go on to say:

    The relevance of the "evil god" dimension is, this: it reveals that many of the arguments for god are no less arguments for an evil god, and that many of the standard theistic explanations for evil work just as well (in defence of a evil god) as explanations of good.

    Well, that’s exactly what I meant by “stalemate.” And I think it’s pretty obvious that that’s what I meant, since this “we can run the same moves for the evil god as for a good god” shtick is your main theme!

    This is a good illustration of how your position only becomes more baffling the more you try to clarify it. You shift your ground constantly to avoid refutation and succeed only in kicking up so much dust that no one is sure what the hell you’re talking about anymore -- even as you stamp your feet and insist that it’s obvious, obvious what you’re saying and that those who claim otherwise are being dishonest, that their views are obviously awful, ludicrous, hopeless, etc., that those who disagree with your estimation of the POE’s force are “twerps,” that “the philosophical community” is on your side, that we oughtn’t to forget that you got your paper into Religious Studies, and so on and on. And then -- here’s the beauty part -- you cap this embarrassing tantrum by accusing others of being in the grip of “growing frustration and anger” and “so stuck in a particular way of thinking” that “anything a critic might say must be forced [by them] into the mould of something [they’re] already familiar with” (!) (I know you’re a good lookin’ guy and all, Stephen, but you seem to have been gazing at your own reflection for so long that you’ve forgotten who it is you’re seeing!)

    Furthermore, when you do say something clearly you merely repeat things you’ve said already, without answering, or even showing any sign of understanding, the criticisms people have made of them. For instance, you say:

    Saying, "But as I define "god" an 'evil god' is conceptually incoherent' neither neutralizes this challenge nor meets it. This is because, for example, (i) we can simply rephrase the challenge in terms of an evil creator, (ii) in any case, pointing out that a hypothesis is conceptually incoherent doesn't establish there cannot be powerful empirical evidence against it (or prima facie powerful evidence, at least). Hence, there can still be powerful evidence against the evil god hypothesis provided by the evidential problem of good.

    As I and others have said I don’t know how many times now, one problem with this whole setup is that it begs the question -- in particular, it simply assumes that good and evil are on a metaphysical par, which is precisely part of what is at issue. For if the correct account of evil is the privation view (which is part of classical theism, though a non-classical theist, or indeed a non-theist, could endorse it too), then you can’t run the challenge for an “evil god,” or an “evil creator,” for that matter. Indeed, using the word “creator” only makes the reason more obvious. Whatever else “the creator” of the world is, He is for the classical theist that which alone can be the ultimate cause of this or that finite being, precisely because He is not merely one more being among others but Being Itself. Thus, given the privation view (which holds that evil is the absence of being), He cannot intelligibly be said to be evil. And thus to say “Well, we can just rephrase the challenge in terms of an evil creator” simply misses the whole point.

    (continued)

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  46. (continued)

    You can say that the privation view is stupid, that you don’t buy this “Being Itself” stuff, that the “philosophical community” has somewhere “issued a verdict” on it all, etc. all you like. Fine, great, whatever. That’s irrelevant. For even if the privation view and all the rest were as stupid as you like to think, it would be whatever the independent reasons are why you think they are stupid that will be doing the philosophical work, and not the idea of an “evil god” or “evil creator.”

    You can also say that appeal to the privation view really only tries to “meet” the EGC rather than shows that it doesn’t apply to classical theism, but as I’ve said before, that just makes the EGC, as applied to classical theism specifically, as trivial as a “material res cogitans challenge” would be trivial given that it can easily be met by pointing out what Cartesians mean by “res cogitans,” or a “round square challenge” would be trivial given that it can easily be met by pointing out what “round” and “square” mean, or an “evil Form of the Good challenge” would be trivial given that it can easily be met by calling to mind the basics of Platonic metaphysics. Against classical theism, specifically, the “evil god” (or “evil creator” or “evil whatever”) concept does, again, no work at all. It is the problem of evil and/or the independent criticisms of the various aspects of classical theism (of privation, or the doctrine of the transcendentals, or whatever) that are doing the work.

    Indeed, you seem implicitly to concede this when you say in the passage quoted above (and as others have pointed out) that the “evil god” idea can be run for “many” theistic arguments and theodicies. But “many” is not “all” -- and for the reasons I’ve now stated many times and which you’ve answered only with fuddle and bluster, it cannot apply to classical theism, specifically.

    Why you don’t just finally admit this (dare I say obvious) point and say “Fine, so the EGC is a challenge only to theistic personalism, and for classical theism we have to go with a more traditional problem of evil argument,” I have no idea.

    OK, that’s not true, I do have an idea, though I’m afraid I’ll have to indulge in a little Stephen Law-style philosophy-by-psychoanalysis to explain what it is: You are really, really, really attached to this notion that the EGC is a fresh, new, exciting, and completely general magic bullet, useful against all forms of theism, sprung from the nimble brain of Hero To Freethinkers Everywhere Stephen Law and sure to put paid to the forces of religious dogmatism once and for all. Plus you’ve now shot off your mouth so much that it would be, shall we say, a little embarrassing to backtrack at this point.

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  47. Law’s aim at this point isn’t likely to be to ‘challenge’ theism of any theoretical stripe (the opening line of the abstract notwithstanding), but to market an article that he realizes won’t otherwise foreseeably improve on its two citations in the literature. Not that it would much matter to philosophical theology were he to succeed in this, since the central challenge to (classical) theism lies not in empiricism, but in the charge that any attempt to ground faith in metaphysics is paganism and a sin … hardly a critical line Law is apt to explore.

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  48. @Tony:

    "To ask Euclid for more than that proof is to ask for logic and deduction to do more than deduce correctly, you are asking them to convince the stupid, the careless, the muddled, and the dogmatic logical skeptic. That's not their job."

    In other words, to quote from my lifelong hero, the wisest and most humane of all literary critics, Dr. Johnson:

    "Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding."

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  49. As I argued above, even if Stephen’s idea about reverse theodicies works it is irrelevant. A theodicy is a defense of the all-good god hypothesis, so the only question is whether it succeeds in showing that an all-good god would want to create the world as it (with all the goods and evils in it). If such a theodicy succeeds then it defeats the argument from evil against the all-good god hypothesis. If a reverse theodicy shows that an all-evil god would also want to create the world as it is then it would defeat an “argument from good” against the all-evil god hypothesis – which is beside the point. Even if such a reverse theodicy succeeds, the argument from evil against the all-good god hypothesis would remain defeated.

    So Stephen’s challenge only makes sense in respect to positive arguments for the all-good god hypothesis. If it were the case that for any such argument there exists an equally plausible argument for the all-evil god hypothesis then indeed he’d have demonstrated that belief in an all-good god is unjustified by these arguments. But I don’t think it is true that any argument for an all-good god can be reversed. For starters, as others have here noted, the mere idea that an all-knowledgeable god would also be all-evil strikes one as incoherent. Nor can the argument from personal experience be reversed, because as a matter of fact one experiences an all-good god. And so on.

    On the other hand I don’t think that Ed’s response based on the characteristics of classical theism is sound. It is the case that according to classical theism God is necessarily good, but, also, that God necessarily exists. This does not mean that the classical theist need not worry for any arguments against the goodness of God, or against the existence of God. Perhaps Stephen could clarify his challenge by not using “god” or “God” at all, by using the concept of what’s metaphysically ultimate, or the “MU”. All theists, whether classic or modern, believe that MU is good. Stephen’s challenge would now be that for any reason to believe that MU is good there is also a reason to believe that MU is evil.

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  50. James,

    I find this criticism that you articulate quite odd. Christianity apart from a Greek metaphysics is not Christianity. It would be impossible to express the doctrines of the creeds and councils of the Early church in the Hebraic idiom. The Trinity (i.e. three hypostases in one ousia) and Christ as both fully human and divine (the hypostatic union) cannot be expressed in any other idiom but the Greek. In other words, the Christian scriptures of the New Testament give no way of making coherent that Christ is God, the Father is God, the Spirit is God, all three are somehow distinct, and there is one God. It is only with Greek philosophy that these seemingly conflicting assertions become coherent.

    This is why the most honest Protestantism is liberal Protestantism. From its birth, Protestantism has affirmed and carried forth a project of the dehellenization of Christianity and reliance upon scripture. While theological liberals take this project to its natural end, i.e., the total abandonment of Christian doctrines constructed in the Greek idiom, theological conservatives chooses to stop at an arbitrary point in order to preserve traditional orthodoxy, even though it has no grounds to do so.

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  51. Put this up a few days ago at Law's blog:

    Stephen:

    Just to add to my comment.

    Your challenge’s applicability to classical theism hinges upon the possibility of seeking empirical evidence for or against incoherent and impossible propositions. I think that you agree that this is impossible in a direct fashion, i.e. if one has an incoherent proposition P, then it is just meaningless and nonsensical, and thus there is neither evidence for nor against it.

    However, you seem to believe that one can do so indirectly by finding a general proposition that contains a vague or indeterminate term, which could make the proposition incoherent if the term is itself incoherent. Thus, by finding empirical evidence against the coherent general proposition, then one has automatically found evidence against all coherent and incoherent specific propositions that follow from the general proposition once the term is specified.

    But doesn’t that presuppose that the refutation of a coherent general proposition equally applies to its incoherent specific propositions? That would assume that the incoherent specific propositions could be bearers or truth or falsity in order to have evidence for or against them, right? But what if an incoherent proposition is neither true nor false? Then your argument wouldn’t follow, because truth and falsify cannot be transferred to propositions that can be neither true nor false.

    And that would seem to undermine your challenge when it comes to classical theism.

    Any thoughts?


    It just seems that his argument comes down to pretending that an incoherent proposition still retains sense enough to warrant empirical confirmation or falsification, but to me, that just doesn't make any sense. An incoherent proposition is nonsense, and is just a meaningless combination of words.

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  52. JA,

    “I find this criticism that you articulate quite odd.”

    As I find your response to it.

    “Christianity apart from a Greek metaphysics is not Christianity.”

    I’m not sure if you’re making a terminological or a substantive point here. Do you mean that if I call myself a Christian but reject Greek metaphysics, then I have no right to call myself a Christian? Or do you mean that as a matter of fact there just is no such thing as Christianity minus Greek metaphysics and any view to the contrary (and a fortiori my own) is simply mistaken?

    “It would be impossible to express the doctrines of the creeds and councils of the Early church in the Hebraic idiom.”

    I don’t doubt it. But I don’t advocate expressing these doctrines in ‘the Hebraic idiom’ either if by that you mean something like ‘restored to a putative prehellenized form’.

    “It is only with Greek philosophy that these seemingly conflicting assertions become coherent.”

    This I dispute. In the current context it is precisely the predisposition to Greek metaphysics that requires the texts be asseverative (and thus subject to a requirement of propositional coherence) in the relevant sense. I do not regard Christian doctrine as such as propositional – or rather, to the extent that propositional doctrine is conceived of as foundational to Christian doctrine, I (consonant with various veins of specifically orthodox thought) regard that as paganism.

    “This is why the most honest Protestantism is liberal Protestantism. From its birth, Protestantism has affirmed and carried forth a project of the dehellenization of Christianity and reliance upon scripture. While theological liberals take this project to its natural end, i.e., the total abandonment of Christian doctrines constructed in the Greek idiom, theological conservatives chooses to stop at an arbitrary point in order to preserve traditional orthodoxy, even though it has no grounds to do so.

    Unsure how you intend me to read this. Whether bad faith can be imputed to conservative Protestantism or not, I myself am neither liberal, nor Protestant.

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  53. Tony said...

    DNW, that is a fair summary of Law's argument. That is, of his original argument. Now that it is shown to be useless about classical theism, he wishes it were a somewhat different argument. In trying to re-invent it so that it "speaks to" classical theism's God, he either muddles it on its own, or confuses it with the "problem of evil" as such. He also seems to be absolutely deaf to the fact that the theist need not be convinced that the empirical evidence leads firmly toward a good god, toward an evil god, or to anything at all conclusively. All the debater needs to do to defeat Law's argument is to say: the empirical evidence from good and evil is inconclusive in itself, no results are possible.

    ..."

    Hi Tony,

    I'm not certain, but if you are referring to the 1:52 PM posting specifically, rather than my scattered comments, I was by and large quoting and congratulating Mateus, who managed to fairly reproduce, I thought, the likely gist of Law's argument in conversational language.

    Many of us have been been busy tearing at Law's predicates which are so obviously philosophically and historically objectionable.

    I in fact, initially suspected that despite Law's reference to a "challenge" and to "empirical" data, he thought he had managed a proof purporting to establish the invalidity of a certain deductive argument form, and had hidden it in there somewhere. LOL

    Mateus asked us to pretend to be as naive about history and the concepts of good and evil as the man in the street Law posits as the arbitrator.

    I suppose that there are somewhere people to be found who have never thought about the history of the meaning of the terms "good" and "evil"; nor read the Christian scriptures framework assumption that the rain falls on the good and evil alike, and that the collapsing tower of Siloam did not target by moral deserts.

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  54. Dianelos, I think that there is a difference between an argument that claims as its point (A) that "there is no sufficient basis to believe in a good god" and an argument whose point (B) "poses a potential problem in how there can be a good god". In giving A, you think that a person who walks away thinking there is a good god is being irrational. In giving B you are basically admitting that your point is really no stronger than a probable argument, which MAY be a pointer to the truth but cannot firmly establish it. Since the relative weight of probable arguments is inherently dubious, a person who walks away from B thinking, there IS a good god and that we need a more complete understanding to know how to deal with the problem posed, is perfectly rational.

    All Law has done with regard to (some) arguments for a good god NOT based on the empirical evidence of good and evil in the world, is to pose some problems rooted in probable arguments. The problems are problems with these good-god arguments, not diproofs of the conclusion, at all. (Stating "X and Y lead to Z" may be shown to be an insufficient argument for establishing Z WITHOUT showing that Z is actually wrong.) And none of his probable arguments directly take on the classical theistic stance. If you look carefully, all of the good god arguments he deals with from "Other Moves" point on are quite different from the classical theistic argument. He somehow manages to leave that one off the list. So, no, his position doesn't really pose any problems for the classical position. Which doesn't mean you cannot construct such a problem, it just means that Law has not done so.

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  55. @dguller

    I dont think that the contradictory concept of an evil god causes a big problem for the EGC, though. Suppose someone says to you that sun will shine and will not shine tomorrow at the same time. You know apriori that this is false, but you can also disprove this a posteriori (by experience).

    ---

    Nevertheless, the EGC fails in another way in regards to classical theism. A classic proof for God is by itself already a theodicy. (And there is no better theodicy than that) But it is simply impossible to built a reverse theodicy out of such a proof. For the EGC to work there has to be a reverse theodicy, otherwise it simply fails and becomes irrelevant.

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  56. radp:

    I think you are too charitable about the cogency of an evil god. I grant that the EGC gets us to an Evil Demiurge, but that's a purely Platonic quirk. A central pillar of classical metaphysics is that "the good is diffusive of itself". I grant that this is also a heavily Platonic, and especially Plotinian notion, but it also has a major place in Aristotelianism too. The very fact that we 'have' a world of which to speak in the EGC, itself refutes the utter malfeasance of any allegedly "purely evil god". God is Creator of the world because he deigns to see His own goodness reflected in lesser analogically modes of being. That does not add anything to his own self-possessed absolute goodness, but it does add something, namely, the enjoyment of His goodness by creatures. As Augustine said in De doctrina christiana I, 32, "Because God is good we exist". Strange as it may sound, then, the worst thing an evil god could do is nothing, i.e. not allow anything else partake of his glory. Only a world-free domain of discourse gives room there being a truly evil god. For God is a person is the most perfect sense, in the sense that he perfects what a human person is at bottom: an orchestra of capacities seeking their perfection by the various proper means. For us, these means include nutrition, motion, volition, etc., but for God they all resolve into the one act of knowing Himself as the end and foundation of anything that could possibly be.

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  57. Radp:

    I dont think that the contradictory concept of an evil god causes a big problem for the EGC, though. Suppose someone says to you that sun will shine and will not shine tomorrow at the same time. You know apriori that this is false, but you can also disprove this a posteriori (by experience).

    For a proposition to be either true or false, it must first have sense. A contradiction has no sense by virtue of being incoherent, and thus cannot be true or false. And if it can be neither true nor false, then it can neither be proved nor disproved. It is like trying to prove “dog rabbit blurg”, which is just word salad.

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  58. DOES EMPERICAL EVIDENCE TRUMP METAPHYSICS?
    (when assessing ethical predicate terms such as “good” and “evil”)

    Stephen Law Writes (in his blog post “Fumbling Feser”:

    “Some have objected that if something is ruled out conceptually, then it makes no sense to suppose there could also be empirical evidence against it. But it seems there can.

    For example, William Lane Craig's cosmological argument relies on the thought that an infinitely old universe is a conceptual impossibility. Yet Craig also thinks there's also good empirical evidence that the universe is not infinitely old (i.e. evidence for a Big Bang). So he, for one, accepts that something that's ruled out conceptually might also be reasonably ruled out inductively, on the basis of empirical observation.”

    As far as I can tell, this is the closest Law has come to explaining why he thinks the empirical evidence can still support an EGC challenge against classical theism, despite the classical theist’s metaphysically motivated impossibility (incoherence) argument to the contrary.

    First, a few words in Craig’s defense, which have a bearing on the larger question. The term “conceptual impossibility” is ambiguous. Does Law think that Craig has the concept that an infinitely old universe (IOU) is a “logical” impossibility (i.e. contradiction), a metaphysical impossibility, or both, or something else altogether? Craig has specifically affirmed that the proposition “an actual infinite exists” is NOT a logical contradiction. He has, however, argued that the existence of an actual infinite is plausibly a metaphysical impossibility. Even so, arguing that an actual infinite is a metaphysical impossibility is a far cry from arguing that an infinitely old universe is a metaphysical impossibility. To be sure, I believe Craig would argue that an infinitely old, infinite, universe is metaphysically impossible. But that the universe might be finite, but have existed from all eternity, seems quite plausible metaphysically; and I am unaware of Craig having ever denied that possibility. Indeed, I would be surprised if he has, since traditional cosmological arguments are run without regard for whether the universe has always existed or not. But it turns out that the apparent force of Law’s example vis-à-vis the metaphysics/evidential question, derives largely from the ambiguity and imprecision inherent in his representation of Craig’s position. Here is what I mean.

    Law says he is thinking about the following claim: “if something has been ruled out conceptually, then it makes no sense to suppose there is empirical evidence against it”. He, of course, disagrees and uses his analysis of Craig as an example to support that disagreement. But suppose I am right that Craig has never argued that an infinitely old FINITE universe is conceptually (either logically or metaphysically) impossible. In that case, the example is no good since we no longer have the contrast of a purported conceptual impossibility later augmented by empirical evidence. But suppose I am also right that what Craig really DOES think is a conceptual impossibility (specifically a metaphysical impossibility), is the existence of an infinitely old, INFINITE universe. In that case it is important to notice that Craig does not just “have the thought” that “an infinitely old, INFINITE, universe is metaphysically impossible”. Rather, he defends a set of very complex metaphysical arguments as to why actual infinites (including an actually infinite universe) are metaphysically impossible.

    cntd . . .

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  59. cntd

    His objection is not grounded in how old the universe might be, but rather in what KIND of universe (an infinite one) is thought to exist. Now suppose Law acknowledges this distinction and reformulates his position as follows: “Craig, just because you argue that an actual infinite universe is metaphysically impossible, that does not entail that there cannot be empirical evidence to the contrary”. But given that all the empirical evidence at the disposal of mankind is finite (I am not sure how we as finite creatures would know something was infinite even if we encountered it), it is hard to imagine what kind of empirical evidence might be marshaled to argue that the universe is, in fact, infinite. Granted, one can come up with all kinds of theoretical models and formulae about multiverses, etc. But those would all be hypothetical arguments for an infinite universe constructed off of the finite empirical data of our experience. IOW, even in the assessment of a question much nearer to the business of the modern sciences, there seems to be no un-interpreted account of our finite empirical data obviously counting as a contrary to Craig’s metaphysical impossibility claim regarding an actual infinite universe.

    But much more importantly; suppose – for sake of argument – that Craig did hold that an infinitely old universe (whether finite or infinite) is conceptually impossible. From the fact that empirical evidence can be marshaled to support the notion that the universe is not infinitely old, it does NOT likewise follow that, despite the classical theist’s conceptual impossibility of an evil god, that empirical evidence simpliciter can also be marshaled to argue for the existence of an evil god (or a good god for that matter). There is not parity between the two cases. Why? Because one cannot make any sense out of ethical predicate terms like “good” and “evil” from an evaluation of empirical evidence – UNLESS one first comes to the evidence already wearing a set of metaphysical lenses. Without some prior metaphysical commitment, the evidential data is ambiguous; not obviously either “good” or “evil” (whatever those terms end up meaning). But questions of size, time (age), shape, mass, etc., are precisely the sorts of predicates which nearly everyone uncontroversially agrees are readily applied to “empirical data” based on simple observation. This is so, not because anyone really does approach even these sorts of questions with absolutely zero metaphysical assumptions at all; but rather, because most all stripes of philosophers, scientists, and folks at large, implicitly or explicitly acknowledge the metaphysical dimension/category of quantitative-extension as part of the real. And it is consideration of quantitative extension which yields answers to shape, mass, time (age) type of questions. A fortiori, the only non-subjective way to predicate terms like “good” and “evil” of “empirical evidence”, is to approach that evidence with a metaphysics MUCH more robust than mere quantitative extension.

    But Law apparently fails to recognize this fundamental point: “Good” and “evil” cannot be intelligibly applied to empirical evidence from a metaphysically neutral paradigm. Hence, when the classical theist tries to point out that the argument for the impossibility of an evil god rests upon a well developed metaphysics of just the kind necessary to make “good” and “evil” predicates intelligible when applied to empirical evidence in the first place; this goes right over Law’s head. He continues to insist: “but what about the empirical evidence”. To which the classical theist can only sigh, and kindly reply: “I have already considered the empirical evidence. Without clear metaphysical commitments, it is inconclusive with regard to the conceptual content of “good” and “evil” predicates. Please go do some metaphysics, and then we’ll talk”.

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  60. "Then again, Law has probably never heard of Plantinga..."

    To be fair to Stephen, he has actually 'debated' him on Premier Radio:

    http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/702458e4-764e-420b-8219-882613c07483.mp3

    Worth listening to, and just before the hour mark they get onto some of the things we are talking about here. What Plantinga has to say in response is interesting too - and not dissimilar to the question I've been trying to ask Dr Law this past few days.

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  61. I will say this for Law, I wish I had his hair - its delightful.

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  62. radp,

    A classic proof for God is by itself already a theodicy. (And there is no better theodicy than that) But it is simply impossible to built a reverse theodicy out of such a proof.

    How about taking the classic proof and, everywhere the word 'good' appears, replace it with 'evil'. Then God = being = evil, i.e., the proof by itself is the reverse theodicy. Now to see if this is viable, I checked in Aquinas, where it is said that, for classical philosophers, the convertibility between 'good' and 'being' is based on "think[ing] of goodness in terms of the conformity to the ideal represented by a things nature or essence." So is it possible to think of this in a reversed way? I think so. Suppose one holds that one's essence is a bad thing, then one would be angry at the Evil God for having been created. To be consistent, one would not want to be anything else either, which is not inconceivable.

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  63. James,

    The "predisposition to Greek metaphysics that requires the texts be asseverative" was not something that was supervened onto the texts post facto, as if hellenization was a later imposition onto a Jewish sect. The beloved disciple does this in his Gospel by making Christ as logos the central theme.

    Further, you still have yet to substantiate the claim that a "propositional" metaphysical articulation of Christian doctrine is somehow uniquely corrupting and pagan. Are you actually making the claim that from a very early period until Luther, the Church, both East and West, was paganized?

    Where are you coming from? You seem to be speaking as one from inside the family, as it were, given the attention that you have given this view, yet you are not a Protestant, and given your disposition toward hellenistic influences as pagan, this would rule out Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy as well, as they are both attached to a Greek metaphysics.

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  64. @Codgitator

    I agree that the EGC is not applicable to classical theism, and that an evil god, as classicaly understood, is just incoherent. What I meant was that the EGC does not fail because an evil god is incoherent. It fails mainly because there is no reverse theodicy for an evil god, given the classical metaphysics. EGC works only against those theisms, where a reverse theodicy can be constructed for a given theodicy. And this means that it is simply not appicable to classical theism.

    ---

    @dguller
    "For a proposition to be either true or false, it must first have sense."

    Agreed.

    "A contradiction has no sense by virtue of being incoherent, and thus cannot be true or false."

    Not true. Take this proposition: "There are no square circles." Surely, this is a true proposition. To speak of a concept as incoherent implies already that you have grasped the sense of the concept.

    It makes no sense to say that blurg is incoherent, because the term "blurg" has no meaning. But it makes sense to say that a square circle is an incoherent concept.
    ---

    @SR

    "How about taking the classic proof and, everywhere the word 'good' appears, replace it with 'evil'. Then God = being = evil, i.e., the proof by itself is the reverse theodicy"

    This does not work. If you say that evil is convertible with being, you have just renamed what is called good. You could as well replace the term good with the term "X", while keeping the old sense of the term.

    What you need is, that you can replace the terms and at the same time keep their meaning, i.e. where the term "good" appears you should be able to put "privation of good". But such a proof does not work. A pure privation of good, i.e. a pure privation of being, is just nothing.

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  65. Edward, you use a model of "God" and it's notion of well-being to argue that "God" is perfectly healthy.

    However, I can't see why a being in perfect tip-top health needs to also be perfectly good or evil.

    This seems like comic book characters where you have a super hero or super villian.

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  66. Mark Szlazak,

    It seems like you haven't been following the discussion (or you don't understand classical theism) and decided to just now interject.

    Classical theism does not arrive at its theological conceptualization of God by resort to comic books, but by a rigorous philosophy of nature and metaphysics. According to these arguments, God is by necessity perfectly good (or, more accurately, the Good itself) based upon the doctrines of privation and the transcendentals.

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  67. radp,

    The proof works (assuming one accepts essentialism at all), it is just one that hardly anyone would accept. But imagine someone who, instead of classical theism's assumption that good is conformity to one's essence, assumes that conformity to one's essence to be evil. In other words, I am not just relabeling, I am talking about someone with a very different presupposition about what is good, namely someone who finds existence intolerable.

    What this in fact shows is the radical asymmetry that exists in classical theism between good and evil. Its reversal is one that only the most radical of nihilists could accept.

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  68. Correct!

    OK JA maybe you can help get me up to speed.

    Privation is just lack of well-being. This means being sick or unhealthy. The opposite is just being healthy.

    So how does being healthy have anything to do with being perfectly "good" or "evil"?

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  69. JA,

    No Christianity without Greek metaphysics you were saying.

    Utitur tamen sacra doctrina etiam ratione humana, non quidem ad probandum fidem, quia per hoc tolleretur meritum fidei; sed ad manifestandum aliqua alia quae traduntur in hac doctrina.

    Sed tamen sacra doctrina huiusmodi auctoritatibus utitur quasi extraneis argumentis, et probabilibus. Auctoritatibus autem canonicae Scripturae utitur proprie, ex necessitate argumentando. Auctoritatibus autem aliorum doctorum Ecclesiae, quasi arguendo ex propriis, sed probabiliter. Innititur enim fides nostra revelationi apostolis et prophetis factae, qui canonicos libros scripserunt, non autem revelationi, si qua fuit aliis doctoribus facta.

    (Aquinas, ST I.1.8, ad 2)

    RC sacred doctrine explicitly makes use of the arguments of Greek metaphysics as merely ‘extrinsic and probable’. In other words, they are not even ‘affirmed in doctrinal decrees’, much less ‘theologically certain’, and so far from being ‘catholic doctrine’, let alone de fide (not ecclesiastica and certainly not divina) that the censure attached to contradiction is — ‘none’.

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  70. Random thoughts after wading through the comments on this thread:

    Law’s argument is made with the empiricist assumption that empirical evidence trumps all.

    Law needs to also define the term “god”. He seems to think that a “god” is something that, if good, will cause the majority of the universe to be good, and if evil, will cause it to be evil.

    Does anyone (even a theistic personalist) actually make the argument that the good in this world rules out an evil god? If they do, they’re as hopeless as someone who makes the argument that the evil in this world rules out a good god. To my mind then, “the evil god challenge” renders both arguments moot!

    It seems the height of absurdity to even think that evidential arguments for God’s morality carry any weight given that everyone knows that both good and evil exist.

    Law says that an evil god is dismissed as absurd but that’s not true. A common rant among atheists is “If God exists, he must be evil – given what goes on in the world.” So an evil god is not dismissed as illogical but rather is put forth as the most logical type of god that can exist.

    If good = being, evil god cannot exist.

    Evil is not evidence against the God of classical theism.

    Neither a good god nor an evil god can be ruled out based on evidence alone.

    An evil god is not rejected due to the existence of good in the world, but rather because such a being is a metaphysical impossibility.

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  71. James,

    First, could you respond to the questions/points raised last time? Specifically, you aver that this is some pagan corruption, but have yet to substantiate this at all.

    Second, the section you referenced was in regard to proofs and demonstrations based upon an Aristotelian metaphysics and natural philosophy. Of course all of that is optional; however, that doesn't mean that Church doctrine, expressed in the creeds/councils, can be understood apart from a hellenistic metaphysical framework. They cannot be. Since the Church (RC and EO) teaches that the creeds/councils constitute the basic confessional beliefs, then the basic confessional beliefs cannot be understood apart from a hellenistic vocabulary and at least some metaphysical premises.

    Referencing Aquinas on his metaphysical demonstrations does not touch on my contention, which is that Christianity is as uniquely Hellenic as it is Hebraic, but is completely irrelevant to the topic in discussion: can Christianity be articulated apart from the Hellenic idiom, which is inherently metaphysical, and your still undemonstrated contention that metaphysics is corrupting and inherently pagan.

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  72. JA,

    Your original contention was: “Christianity apart from a Greek metaphysics is not Christianity.” This is contradictory to RC teaching. Greek metaphysics is, in the strict sense, ‘extrinsic’ and merely ‘probable’ (i.e. Greek metaphysics is not ‘theologically certain’, not ‘catholic doctrine’, and certainly not ‘de fide’). The creeds &c. therefore can explicitly be understood apart from Greek metaphysics. If you nonetheless wish to believe that ‘the Greek/Hellenic idiom’ is intrinsic to the creeds, you will therefore have to distinguish that ‘idiom’ (whatever you may think it is) from Greek metaphysics as such. But since you both confuse ‘Hellenic’ and ‘Hellenistic’ and already concede that Aristotelian metaphysics is ‘optional’, which non-Aristotelian Greek (possibly Hellenistic – Stoic?) metaphysics is ‘inherent’ to the ‘Hellenic idiom’? As noted above, the RC Church uses the ‘extrinsic and probable’ arguments of Greek metaphysics ad manifestandum aliqua alia quae traduntur in hac doctrina, not to prove doctrines of ecclesiastical or divine faith (ad probandum fidem). If those Greek metaphysical arguments should fail, other philosophical means are available to fulfil their purpose. The metaphysical arguments are not de fide, the articles are, which is why the arguments are extrinsic to the articles. To make extrinsic authorities intrinsic to de fide truths is eo ipso paganism.

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  73. James,

    The very language of the Nicene Creed uses metaphysical terms from Greek thought, such as ousia and hypostasis. In order to affirm these creeds, one must draw upon a certain metaphysical framework.

    All the references you have made about such metaphysics being "extrinsic" and "probable" to RC doctrine by Aquinas is in reference to his developed metaphysics and natural philosophy in terms of his proofs, natural law, etc. There is no dispute that Thomist philosophy in particular is necessary to uphold in order to be a Christian, again, to affirm the Nicene Creed, one has to assume some Greek metaphysical categories in order to comprehend it.

    You completely failed to make this distinction after I pointed it out in my last post. Instead, you merely repeated your assertion that your earlier about Thomism extends to all metaphysical thought.

    Second, you write, "To make extrinsic authorities intrinsic to de fide truths is eo ipso paganism." Two points in response. First, to characterize this as an appeal to an external authority is not what the Nicene Creed does when it uses the terms I described, but appeal to a language and a philosophy about reality inherent to that language. There is no revelation or human authority extrinsic to the faith involved. Second, you are again merely asserting that this makes it paganism. That is, once again, not an argument.

    Finally, you could be more charitable, viz. in my confusion between Hellenic and Hellenistic. That post was hastily written between two classes. To use it as evidence that I do not understand something is a bit absurd.

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  74. James,

    Further, are you actually contending that all of the greatest teachers of the Church, from the Cappadocian Fathers to Gregory of Palamas in the East and Augustine to Aquinas in the West, are all corrupted by paganism? Even the understanding of the Eucharist as a mystery uses Greek metaphysical categories. I am thoroughly perplexed how anyone but a Protestant can accept your condemnation.

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  75. Tony, you have made an incredibly large number of assertions that you haven't backed up just to dismiss my argument.

    Besides, the argument from motion in incoherent in light of the modern understanding of relativity - there is no such thing as absolute motion in the first place.

    I see no need to further address the argument.

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  76. "No one denies, by the way, that God has "personal" qualities -- that there is in Him something analogous to intellect and will, that He loves us, etc."

    Well, Aristotle certainly denies that he loves us!

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  77. @Nightvid:

    "Besides, the argument from motion in incoherent in light of the modern understanding of relativity - there is no such thing as absolute motion in the first place."

    Sigh... if you want to refute the arguments, why don't you *actually* try to understand them?

    Motion as used in the First Way means change. Whatever relativity theory has to say, it is completely irrelevant to the argument.

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  78. Well, Aristotle certainly denies that he loves us!

    True, Gene, but what I had in mind was the classical theism vs. theistic personalism dispute in contemporary philosophy of religion (which is what I was being asked about when I made that remark) and people on either side of that contemporary dispute agree that God loves us.

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  79. Besides, the argument from motion in incoherent in light of the modern understanding of relativity - there is no such thing as absolute motion in the first place.


    The classical term "motion" means change, not movement. Movement is a type of change, but not all change is movement.

    And there is certainly change in modern physics.

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  80. >Besides, the argument from motion in incoherent in light of the modern understanding of relativity - there is no such thing as absolute motion in the first place.

    Motion in metaphysics is a philosophical modelling and description of being. Not a scientific definition of momentum in physics. In the metaphysics of Aristotle, Motion refers to potencies being actualized by an Actualizing agent. That is change.

    Not physical movement per say (accept as far as physical movement is a type of change).

    So you are making a category mistake here.

    You need to learn more before you post.

    Peace.

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  81. JA,

    “There is no dispute that Thomist philosophy in particular is necessary to uphold in order to be a Christian, again, to affirm the Nicene Creed, one has to assume some Greek metaphysical categories in order to comprehend it.”

    One may (but need not) assume such a thing. The Church does so specifically on the grounds that it is ‘probable’. It is emphatically not necessary. See next.

    “You completely failed to make this distinction after I pointed it out in my last post. Instead, you merely repeated your assertion that your earlier about Thomism extends to all metaphysical thought.”

    Not only is your claim that I ‘completely failed to make this distinction’ false (I wrote: “If those Greek metaphysical arguments should fail, other philosophical means are available to fulfil their purpose.” Note, they needn’t be metaphysical, let alone Greek.), but the distinction is also completely irrelevant to the RC theological qualifications ‘probable’ and de fide. Nor is it my assertion, but Church teaching. At this point it seems obvious that the problem here is that you simply don’t know what the Church’s theological qualifications are or mean.

    “First, to characterize this as an appeal to an external authority is not what the Nicene Creed does when it uses the terms I described, but appeal to a language and a philosophy about reality inherent to that language. There is no revelation or human authority extrinsic to the faith involved. Second, you are again merely asserting that this makes it paganism.”

    I’m not claiming the Nicene (or any other) Creed is appealing to an external authority (following RC teaching I have several times now explicitly differentiated de fide dogmata and probable metaphysical arguments used to define them). I am claiming that (1) you are appealing to an external authority as inherent to those dogmata (“the basic confessional beliefs cannot be understood apart from a hellenistic vocabulary and at least some metaphysical premises”), thereby contradicting RC teaching and (2) that the assertion that this is paganism is RC teaching precisely because it entails submitting de fide dogmata to the extrinsic authority of probable argumentation, i.e. attempting to subject the authority of revealed truth to the authority of metaphysical argument.

    “Further, are you actually contending that all of the greatest teachers of the Church, from the Cappadocian Fathers to Gregory of Palamas in the East and Augustine to Aquinas in the West, are all corrupted by paganism?”

    No. I’m claiming that you are corrupted by paganism.

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  82. Incidentally,

    “The very language of the Nicene Creed uses metaphysical terms from Greek thought, such as ousia and hypostasis. In order to affirm these creeds, one must draw upon a certain metaphysical framework.”

    The Nicene Creed contains neither the word οὐσία, nor the word ὑπόστασις. It does contain the word ὁμοούσιον, meaning ‘consubstantial’, but to claim the term is metaphysical is to beg the question. Contrast the following mundane examples in English:

    “As in Spring-time, from one sappie twigg There sprouts another consubstantiall sprigg.”
    J. Sylvester tr. G. de S. Du Bartas Deuine Weekes & Wks. i. vi. 217

    “A book consubstantiall to his Author.”
    J. Florio tr. Montaigne Ess. ii. xviii. 385

    Or the following mundane example in Greek:

    σφάλλονται δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡγεῖσθαι τὰ αἴτια τοῖς ἀποτελουμένοις ἀφ' ἑαυτῶν ὁμοούσια εἶναι καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ κοινὸν λόγον τῆς αἰτίας ἐπί τε τῶν σωμάτων καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀσωμάτων ὑποτίθεσθαι.
    Chrysippus, Fragmenta logica et physica, Fr. 389.4

    The metaphysical use (to which you hold the articles of the faith hostage) is necessarily and avowedly a posteriori to both the mundane and the credal uses.

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  83. Can someone answer these questions:

    How does the evil god challenge apply to theistic personalism?

    And...

    Do theistic personalists actually make the argument that the good in this world proves that God is good?

    Thanks.

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  84. "How does the evil god challenge apply to theistic personalism?"

    It applies to one brand of theism, if its metaphysical framework implies that good and evil are on par, and if the good in the world and an "evil god" are incompatible. Thats the best I can make out of the EGC.

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  85. James,

    For the sake of argument let's grant your assessment of the Creeds, etc., and the "extrinsic" and "probable" nature of Greek metaphysics. I am not familiar enough with the Greek texts/language to dispute your interpretation. As such, I will back away from my stronger claims and take a deeper look at this matter.

    With that aside, your reference to the "extrinsic" and "probable" nature of metaphysics came from Aquinas' Summa. The arguments that Feser has made are largely drawn from the philosophical and theological work of Aquinas, which includes the Summa. Yet, you characterize Feser's argument as an "attempt to ground faith in metaphysics [which] is paganism and a sin." So you are criticizing Feser for supposedly appealing to pagan thought and substantiate your position based upon the writings of the same corrupted pagan that Feser builds on. How is this consistent?

    Further, you never really addressed my question regarding whether "all of the greatest teachers of the Church, from the Cappadocian Fathers to Gregory of Palamas in the East and Augustine to Aquinas in the West, are all corrupted by paganism," except to deny it (and rather abrasively accuse me of paganism) without any substantiation whatsoever. But I would contend that if your characterization of Aquinas' arguments are pagan, than literally all of these Church fathers and the Church itself has to be understood as pagan as well, down to the bone.

    So which is it? Are Feser and all of these Church Fathers pagan because they accept and extend a synthesis between Christian theology and Greek philosophy? Or is all this legitimate? If the latter, why your initial characterization of it as "paganism and sin."

    Again, what is your position--you have not yet made this clear, so it has been impossible to place your arguments. You've only mentioned that you are not a Protestant. Are you a nominalist? Do you simply view your position as antagonistic to reason and existentialist?

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  86. Professor Feser,

    Your input into this disagreement between myself and James would be most appreciated, if you have the time and are so inclined. He has claimed that your "attempt to ground faith in metaphysics is paganism and a sin." I find this position quite odd given, as you argued, that both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are articulated through the use of such metaphysics.

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  87. Daniel Smith,

    Feser did not argue that it does apply to theistic personalism; instead, in an earlier post he claimed that he wasn't sure if it did or did not because he has little interest in exploring its relation to a framework he doesn't endorse (which is completely reasonable). Instead, he made the argument that it does not apply to classical theism, for reasons that should be obvious at this point.

    If you find that the challenge fails on its own terms for other reasons, than it doesn't even apply to theistic personalism. Many make that argument in the comments. RD Miksa provided a pretty good summary of such arguments. However, if the challenge does not fail on its own terms, than it may apply to theistic personalism because that framework does not provide a philosophically grounded explanation that necessitates God's goodness, which classical theism does.

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  88. I'm sorry, but I can't see how the EGC works even against the God of snake-juggling wet-lipped cardigan-wearing banjo-twangers, never mind classical theism.

    Even without going down the classical route, surely one can just shrug and say that the basic proofs for God's existence say nothing about God's moral orientation (i.e. they could indeed – gasp! - apply to an evil god), and hold that establishing God's moral orientation requires a separate argument? That’s pretty much what most evangelicals I know believe anyway. Once you’ve separated the two issues, who gives a rat's ass if the proofs (Kalam, whatever) could just as easily apply to an evil god? As everyone keeps on pointing out, to refute either argument (the one for God or the one for God’s goodness) you’d need more than the EGC. You’d need... well, all the usual arguments that existed before the EGC came along.

    Anyway, no Christian I know discounts the idea of an evil god purely on the basis of ‘all the good in the world’. That would lead to dualism, because, um, there’s also bad in the world. You can believe God is good for reasons completely separate from your reasons for believing that God exists – e.g., the existence of the moral reason. Law is free to reject these arguments for God’s morality, but – again – now you’re mobilising the usual arguments that were there before the EGC.
    And as has already been pointed out, Christianity DOES propose the existence of an evil god. It’s right there in the bible.

    What am I missing? Sorry, but as far as I can see, the EGC is even more vacuous than the ‘outsider test for faith’. It would have made Nietzsche fling his arms around a horse and weep. Why aren’t the thinking atheists – ones like dguller, who care about more than just playing pass-the-burden-of-proof – packing out the auditoria and writing the bestsellers?

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  89. Crude once said another problem with the EGC is if taken too seriously it undermines Law's Atheism since it kinda argues for the existence of God. Even if it is Anti-God from the John Carpenter movie PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

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  90. Why aren’t the thinking atheists – ones like dguller, who care about more than just playing pass-the-burden-of-proof – packing out the auditoria and writing the bestsellers?

    Sort of parallels the question "Why is there evil?" doesn't it?

    I don't know? It is one of life's many tragedies. I find the thinking Atheists are moving me closer to God with their thinking.

    The Irony of that is not lost on me I assure you.

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  91. Ben,

    Crude once said another problem with the EGC is if taken too seriously it undermines Law's Atheism since it kinda argues for the existence of God. Even if it is Anti-God from the John Carpenter movie PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

    Well, Law insists that an evil God is absurd (given our knowledge of good in the world), and that everyone agrees this is absurd. He doesn't really support either claim, except to psychoanalyze anyone who disagrees with him and insist they're being dishonest or hyperskeptical, etc. If anyone who agrees that (under the conditions Law outlines) an evil God's existence is not absurd, Law's entire argument disintegrates - and not just against classical theism. It becomes, at best, a counter-apologetic for an evil God, or God that is not purely Good or Evil, etc.

    Now, an atheist is committed to there being no gods, period. Again, Law's argument depends crucially on the absurdity claim. What I find interesting is that in all the discussions I've seen (anecdotal stuff here, of course) I have yet to see a single theist embrace the absurdity claim in that way. In fact, the number of atheists other than Law who embrace it is surprisingly low (I get the impression many atheists thought Law was arguing that we can't be sure whether God is good or evil based on the "pre-theoretic evidence", which is not what Law is going for). But if that claim is rejected, all Law is doing is saying 'the evidence we see in the world can be made compatible with all manner of gods given the right theodicies - including evil gods'. So he's not presenting any argument which disproves or renders absurd a good God. He's saying that there are many more gods than any 'omnibenevolent God' compatible with the evidence, or at least if you drop his absurdity claim, that's what he ends up saying - like it or not.

    I'm partial to classical theism, but I don't think theistic personalism is in very bad shape compared to atheism. I think it would be funny if a theistic personalist apologist took Law's argument and ran with it, to the point of arguing that while the God of Christianity is more reasonable and defensible than some evil god, an evil god's existence is still more reasonable than atheism.

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  92. Ben and Crude,

    I think it runs deeper than either of those descriptions. Law attempts to use the terms good and evil in a pretheoretical neutral sense. However, the very conept of evil assumes God and/or an objective standard of morality. This is a crucial point that Nietzsche first pointed out in the first essay of his "On the Genealogy of Morals." Without presuming the existence of God and/or objective morality, all law can really talk about in pretheoretical terms is "good" and "bad." Things that are "bad" do not appeal to an objective standard, but preferential ones, either individual or cultural. In other words, by the use of the term "evil," he is question begging the very existence of God and/or objective morality.

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  93. JA,

    However, the very conept of evil assumes God and/or an objective standard of morality.

    Do you think a fair way to put this would be 'there is no pre-theoretical "evil" and "good" to speak of'? If so, I'm tempted to agree.

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  94. Crude,

    Precisely. The very use of the word "evil," it's development as a concept in Western language, hinges on a particular conceptualization of God. The very use of the term presumes the existence of God and cannot be used pretheoretically. I'm just surprised that no one brought this up earlier because Nietzsche's work on this is pretty well known.

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  95. JA,

    I'm just surprised that no one brought this up earlier because Nietzsche's work on this is pretty well known.

    I think the problem is that Law's argument has so many places you can jump on, most of them pretty obvious, that it's hard to know where to begin. And since a lot of the criticisms are fatal or near-fatal to his project, most people just pick one and hammer away without thinking of looking for more examples.

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  96. JA: "Feser did not argue that it does apply to theistic personalism; instead, in an earlier post he claimed that he wasn't sure if it did or did not because he has little interest in exploring its relation to a framework he doesn't endorse (which is completely reasonable)."

    I must've missed that. I was under the impression that Ed was saying the EGC does apply to theistic personalism.

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  97. Crude: "Law's argument depends crucially on the absurdity claim."

    He assumes that the rejection of an evil god is based solely on the evidential existence of good in the world. That is an invention of his own mind based on a projected empiricism.

    He's just banking on the fact that all Christians will reject an evil god out of hand. He considers that a "silver bullet" that he assumes - given his empiricism - somehow magically renders all proofs of God indefensible.

    I think he's actually most astounded by the fact that all people aren't empiricists!

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  98. Man with a computer: The classical term "motion" means change, not movement.

    Indeed, the modern term "motion" means change, which is why you can table a motion, or be moved emotionally, and even why we still have the perfectly good word "locomotion" to refer explicitly to change of location. But those who don't know the language will never know what they're talking about.

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  99. Monk68: Stephen Law Writes: “Yet Craig also thinks there's also good empirical evidence that the universe is not infinitely old (i.e. evidence for a Big Bang). So he, for one, accepts that something that's ruled out conceptually might also be reasonably ruled out inductively, on the basis of empirical observation.”

    This such an odd point to make. Of course if something has been proven, then the evidence will support it; the only issue is that for some things we don't or can't have empirical evidence. Craig is merely taking a shortcut: rather than go into his whole proof that the universe must be finitely old, he says, "We all agree that the evidence indicates a finite age for the universe, so let's start from there." (And of course this is what is prompting speculation about "multiverses", to find a different way to interpret the evidence (which gets us back to needing a framework from which to interpret evidence in the first place!)) But Craig obviously doesn't think that evidence can disprove something that is conceptually proven, so there's no point in Law's even bringing this up. Oh well….

    

But suppose I am also right that what Craig really DOES think is a conceptual impossibility (specifically a metaphysical impossibility), is the existence of an infinitely old, INFINITE universe.

    My understanding is that Craig believes actual infinities are impossible because they lead to paradoxes like one (infinite) group of objects having twice as many items as another, and yet being the same size (because you can pair off countable infinities against each other). But of course this shows only that our imaginations cannot handle infinity; mathematicians have long shown that there is no actual logical contradiction involved. So Craig would (mistakenly, I say) think it impossible that the universe extend infinitely in time and/or space.

    I'm curious, though, why you think infinite space is a problem. (Doesn't Aquinas allow for that too? Or is infinitely empty space supposed to get around that?) If there is a problem with an actual infinity, it would be traversing it; but if there were infinite space, there is no need to suppose that anything ever traverses it. (While infinite time, if it is supposed to be a causal alternative to God, would have to be causally traversed, which is why Aquinas rules it out on those grounds. Of course, if God is causing the whole series from the "outside", then there need be nothing actually "traversing" time, so that could be possible too.)

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  100. “you characterize Feser's argument as an "attempt to ground faith in metaphysics [which] is paganism and a sin." So you are criticizing Feser for supposedly appealing to pagan thought and substantiate your position based upon the writings of the same corrupted pagan that Feser builds on. How is this consistent?”

    No, I do not. My point is that the Church does not – in fact – “attempt to ground faith in metaphysics” because to do so would be pagan. What the Church does is, for example, to argue from de fide truths, ecclesiastical truths, and truths ‘proximate to faith’ along metaphysical lines to demonstrate those truths to reason. But failure of metaphysical argument is not failure of revealed truth. No argument proves a doctrine of ecclesiastical or divine faith. An argument may, however, establish dogmatic facts, Catholic teachings, or doctrinal affirmations (each a distinct theological qualification). I don’t know whether Feser conceives of (Thomist) philosophical arguments as providing metaphysical foundations to the articles, but I know Aquinas doesn’t. In any event, you do – and that is contrary to RC teaching.

    “I would contend that if your characterization of Aquinas' arguments are pagan, than literally all of these Church fathers and the Church itself has to be understood as pagan as well, down to the bone.”

    As I have repeatedly noted, it is your understanding of the Church Fathers that I am characterizing as pagan, not that of the Church Fathers themselves. (Though, in any event, why would a pagan Aquinas entail that all Church Fathers be pagan?)

    “Again, what is your position--you have not yet made this clear, so it has been impossible to place your arguments. You've only mentioned that you are not a Protestant. Are you a nominalist? Do you simply view your position as antagonistic to reason and existentialist?”

    I’m not asking you ‘to place my arguments’. I’m asking you not to misrepresent your view that “Christianity apart from a Greek metaphysics is not Christianity” as the position of the Church. It is not.

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  101. Mr. Green,

    "I'm curious, though, why you think infinite space is a problem. (Doesn't Aquinas allow for that too? Or is infinitely empty space supposed to get around that?)"

    I never said it was a problem. I merely stated that Craig believes that actual infinites are plausibly metaphysically impossible (he is careful to use the phrase "plausibly" rather than demonstrably). And the grounds for affirming such “plausible” impossibility involve arguments surrounding just the sort of paradoxes you mention.

    "Plausibly impossible” is something quite different from a metaphysical impossibility full stop (such as “there can be nothing in an effect which was not first in one or more of its causes”, etc). So infinite space? Perhaps. I do find it hard to imagine a metaphysical demonstration which might establish this as an absolute impossibility.

    But I also think Craig is warranted in pointing out that, in most case (he might argue ‘all cases currently known’), whenever we try to get our minds around some proposed “actual infinite”, we run into some real conceptual difficulties. While I am not sure that our inability to “think” clearly about an actual infinite renders it, ipso facto, metaphysically impossible; I do think that such paradoxes are sufficient for Craig’s argument that actual infinites are "plausibly" metaphysically impossible.

    The point of what I wrote, vis-à-vis Law, was not to defend Craig's position, but rather to clarify what Craig’s position actually is, in order to show how that clarification undermines the use which Law hoped to make of it (whether or not Craig is correct or no). Law was trading on an ambiguity in his rendering of Craig’s thinking.

    Pax

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  102. @monk68:

    David Oderberg (and others like Alexander Pruss) also make a case against the universe being past-eternal as violating the PSR. See:

    "Traversal of the Infinite, the 'Big Bang' and the Kalam cosmological argument"

    While I do not estimate Kalam as strong as the Five Ways, I am constantly perplexed by the demuring of the paradoxical situations pointed out against actual infinities ("reversed" Hilbert hotel scenarios can simulate continuous creation "out of nothing", that infinite sets cannot be formed by successive addition, etc.) and I have yet to see a *single* argument presented in their defense besides an appeal to broad logical possibility. So what of mathematical possibility? The Banach-Tarski paradox, space-filling curves, etc. are also logically possible.

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  103. @Grodrigues,

    "I am constantly perplexed by the demuring of the paradoxical situations pointed out against actual infinities ("reversed" Hilbert hotel scenarios can simulate continuous creation "out of nothing", that infinite sets cannot be formed by successive addition, etc.) and I have yet to see a *single* argument presented in their defense besides an appeal to broad logical possibility."

    I entirely agree. Logical possibility is the goto defense, and it does nothing to difuse the force of Craig's case against actual infinites. One really does sense that "plausible" is more than "possible", and more like "highly probable" or maybe even truly impossible. Perhaps Oderberg and Pruss have shown as much. I thank you for the reference, BTW.

    Pax

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  104. it's simply a challenge to explain why belief in a good god is significantly more reasonable than belief in an evil god (or, if you prefer, creator)

    Because the purported metaphysical arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism cannot be converted into arguments for the existence of an evil god/creator.

    The relevance of the "evil god" dimension is, this: it reveals that many of the arguments for god are no less arguments for an evil god

    But not the arguments that Feser defends.

    Saying, "But as I define "god" an 'evil god' is conceptually incoherent' neither neutralizes this challenge nor meets it. This is because, for example, (i) we can simply rephrase the challenge in terms of an evil creator...

    No you can't, precisely because the purported metaphysical arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism cannot be converted into arguments for the existence of an evil god/creator.

    ...(ii) in any case, pointing out that a hypothesis is conceptually incoherent doesn't establish there cannot be powerful empirical evidence against it

    But it does establish that there cannot be any evidence in favour of it. Hence the cases of the God of classical theism vs his evil counterpart are not comparable since the latter is logically impossible. And the cases of the God of classical theism and a general 'evil creator' are not comparable because it's not a comparison of like with like: there may be empirical evidence against both but the case for the former is radically different to the case for the latter.

    EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE MOVES YOU MADE TO DISMISS THE PROBLEM OF EVIL CAN BE FLIPPED AND APPLIED JUST AS EFFECTIVELY IN DEFENCE OF THE EVIL GOD HYPOTHESIS

    But Feser makes those arguments having already defended deductive arguments in favour of the existence of the God of classical theism, arguments that CANNOT BE CONVERTED INTO ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF AN EVIL GOD/CREATOR.

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  105. monk68 / grodrigues,

    Have you read out Pruss' description of the Grim Reaper Paradox to establish that Kalaam premise?

    Here

    Gnarly.

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  106. James,

    Two points:

    First, if you don't think that your initial contention that an "attempt to ground faith in metaphysics [which] is paganism and a sin," applies to Feser and Aquinas, why did you lodge that claim as a possible criticism on this blog? This is why I ask where you are coming from and to better articulate your views. You still seem inconsistent.

    Second, it would greatly appreciated if you would be more charitable. In my last post I wrote, "I will back away from my stronger claims and take a deeper look at this matter."

    Was that not clear? I backed away from my earlier claims in order to reevaluate them in light of new arguments, yet you still insist, repeatedly, that I am in error, pagan, etc., three times in your prior post. This is not civil and respectful conversation. Please drop it. You have no more cause to talk about them because I openly admitted that they may need reevaluation. In other words, I made a concession and then attempted to shift the conversation back to your original claim, which seems inconsistent given your continued qualifications. Please address that.

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  107. @man with a computer:

    "Have you read out Pruss' description of the Grim Reaper Paradox to establish that Kalaam premise?"

    Yes, that was precisely the scenario I had in mind when I parenthetically mentioned Alexander Pruss.

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  108. Monk68: So infinite space? Perhaps. I do find it hard to imagine a metaphysical demonstration which might establish this as an absolute impossibility.

    I would argue that any mathematically possible system could be made into a physical system; at least, I don't see general principle that could deny that.

    While I am not sure that our inability to “think” clearly about an actual infinite renders it, ipso facto, metaphysically impossible; I do think that such paradoxes are sufficient for Craig’s argument that actual infinites are "plausibly" metaphysically impossible.

    Except we can think clearly about infinities — mathematicians do it all the time. What we can't do is imagine them clearly, but there are things we cannot imagine about physics anyway, so I don't think it's reasonable to draw an implausibility out of that. Certain kinds of infinities might be incompatible with certain laws of physics (e.g. our best understanding of the evidence indicates that our universe has not being running forever), but of course God could have created different laws.

    GRodrigues: I am constantly perplexed by the demuring of the paradoxical situations pointed out against actual infinities

    Funnily enough, I'm perplexed by the opposite! If something is actually mathematically contradictory, then that's that; but if not, the "paradox" is only problematic to our intuitions. If it's logically defensible, what other objection can there be? It may not be possible to implement a physical example of Banach-Tarski in our universe, because of the particular physical laws we have, but that wouldn't stop God from creating a different universe with different laws in which it was possible.

    Regarding Pruss's Grim Reaper, I don't see how the conclusion follows. He has only shown that you can't have a universe that is infinite in that way and has Grim Reapers acting that way. It doesn't follow that you can't have either one by itself without the other. Again, this doesn't show that the actual universe could contain infinities (in fact, I believe that it is finite in both space and time, and contents). But there could be a world with different physical laws that did.

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  109. Mr. green: This such an odd point to make. Of course if something has been proven, then the evidence will support it; the only issue is that for some things we don't or can't have empirical evidence.

    I think there is a fuller account to this, and I suspect that the issue is part of why Law keeps making his silly mistakes. "The evidence", especially when it is not just the sheer observed evidence itself but conclusions derived from observations, is often capable of MULTIPLE derived explanatory models, some incompatible with others. Sometimes the conclusions are only probable, rather than certain, because the arguments by which we derive the conclusions are not demonstrations, they are structured as probable arguments.

    In this case, for example, we have observed conditions that are pleasant, and some others that are unpleasant. It is a conclusion derived from the direct observation that some of these are good and some are evil - we don't observe that all of the unpleasant conditions are evil, nor that all of the pleasant conditions are good. It is a still further derived explanation that a good god is compatible with some conditions we think are good conditions. These particular arguments that there ought to be a good god to explain these good conditions (i.e. part of the observed evidence) cannot be called any stronger than probable arguments. That is to say, this set of evidence can be modeled in such a way as to point in the direction of a good god, but there are OTHER alternative models to theorize an explanation of this evidence, and other slices of evidence, so the evidence as a totality is inconclusive. No logical tree about reversal gods can be drawn from such a probable conclusion drawn from incomplete models: it was always inherent in the probable model that handles part of the evidence that other models were possible.

    It is always the case that when we have proven one model of explanation to the exclusion of all other models, we then discover that the totality of the evidence always had been compatible with the true model all along - for otherwise the winning model doesn't actually account for all of the evidence, and is still a potentially falsifiable theory, a work in progress. But it remains true that subsets of the evidence can (still) "point to" another model, a wrong model, in the sense that that model can be compatible with a subset of the evidence, even though it is not compatible with the entirety of the evidence.

    Law apparently wants us to spend enormous efforts looking through the lens of a peculiar sliced subset of the evidence, (excluding the information - including that information that establishes metaphysical principles of act and potency - that demonstrates a fundamental necessary being), a subset that provides a curious probable argument that an evil god is compatible with "the evidence". Well, that's trivial. OF COURSE it is possible to construct a carefully carved out slice of reality that seems to allow for any number of bizarre conclusions as possible explanatory models. So what? Doing so doesn't really bear on any of the conclusions that take into account the entirety of the evidence, of even any OTHER sliced subset of the evidence. It's like a little game in a bottle: "In MY silly bottle-universe, A could account for X, but B could account for Y, so B is just as valid as A." Constructing a game-logic cannot possibly come to bear outside the bottle. The result is utterly trivial.

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  110. Mr. green: This such an odd point to make. Of course if something has been proven, then the evidence will support it; the only issue is that for some things we don't or can't have empirical evidence.

    I think there is a fuller account to this, and I suspect that the issue is part of why Law keeps making his silly mistakes. "The evidence", especially when it is not just the sheer observed evidence itself but conclusions derived from observations, is often capable of MULTIPLE derived explanatory models, some incompatible with others. Sometimes the conclusions are only probable, rather than certain, because the arguments by which we derive the conclusions are not demonstrations, they are structured as probable arguments.

    In this case, for example, we have observed conditions that are pleasant, and some others that are unpleasant. It is a conclusion derived from the direct observation that some of these are good and some are evil - we don't observe that all of the unpleasant conditions are evil, nor that all of the pleasant conditions are good. It is a still further derived explanation that a good god is compatible with some conditions we think are good conditions. These particular arguments that there ought to be a good god to explain these good conditions (i.e. part of the observed evidence) cannot be called any stronger than probable arguments. That is to say, this set of evidence can be modeled in such a way as to point in the direction of a good god, but there are OTHER alternative models to theorize an explanation of this evidence, and other slices of evidence, so the evidence as a totality is inconclusive. No logical tree about reversal gods can be drawn from such a probable conclusion drawn from incomplete models: it was always inherent in the probable model that handles part of the evidence that other models were possible.

    It is always the case that when we have proven one model of explanation to the exclusion of all other models, we then discover that the totality of the evidence always had been compatible with the true model all along - for otherwise the winning model doesn't actually account for all of the evidence, and is still a potentially falsifiable theory, a work in progress. But it remains true that subsets of the evidence can (still) "point to" another model, a wrong model, in the sense that that model can be compatible with a subset of the evidence, even though it is not compatible with the entirety of the evidence.

    Law apparently wants us to spend enormous efforts looking through the lens of a peculiar sliced subset of the evidence, (excluding the information - including that information that establishes metaphysical principles of act and potency - that demonstrates a fundamental necessary being), a subset that provides a curious probable argument that an evil god is compatible with "the evidence". Well, that's trivial. OF COURSE it is possible to construct a carefully carved out slice of reality that seems to allow for any number of bizarre conclusions as possible explanatory models. So what? Doing so doesn't really bear on any of the conclusions that take into account the entirety of the evidence, of even any OTHER sliced subset of the evidence. It's like a little game in a bottle: "In MY silly bottle-universe, A could account for X, but B could account for Y, so B is just as valid as A." Constructing a game-logic cannot possibly come to bear outside the bottle. The result is utterly trivial.

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  111. Mr Green,

    Except we can think clearly about infinities — mathematicians do it all the time. What we can't do is imagine them clearly, but there are things we cannot imagine about physics anyway, so I don't think it's reasonable to draw an implausibility out of that.

    By mathematics we mean two different things: 1) True propositions about formal systems, and 2) a relationship between truths in these formal systems and reality. For example, the number “2” is simply a symbol in the first sense, but is a property of all states of affairs where two countable things exist in the second sense. The fact that we can think clearly (i.e. investigate formal truths) in the first sense, does not imply that we can do the same in the second. So we can think clearly about infinities in the first sense, but not in the second – precisely because actual infinities appear to have absurd implications.

    I’d put it this way: Actual infinities are unintelligible because they entail intuitive paradoxes which are incompatible with our reason. Therefore, either reality is intelligible and actual infinities do not exist, or else reality is not intelligible and perhaps actual infinities do exist.

    Now in this context it may appear that theists behave kind of inconsistently. On the one hand much of theistic argumentation is based on and often makes explicit use of the epistemic commitment that reality is intelligible. On the other hand theists often argue that God is ultimately not intelligible. I think the resolution of this apparent inconsistency is this: On theism our cognitive faculties are reliable and therefore should be relied upon as far as they are able to bring us. Thus, the theist is justified in rejecting that existence of actual infinities, while recognizing that in her limited state full knowledge of God is impossible. In short, theism entails that as far as we can see we can see the truth.

    Incidentally, it is not true that “there are things we cannot imagine about physics”. It is only true that the naturalistic interpretation of modern physics is often deeply counterintuitive as well as grossly unparsimonious. Theists who hold that the natural order is ultimately caused by God’s will face no such difficulties.

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  112. @Mr. Green:

    "I am constantly perplexed by the demuring of the paradoxical situations pointed out against actual infinities

    Funnily enough, I'm perplexed by the opposite! If something is actually mathematically contradictory, then that's that; but if not, the "paradox" is only problematic to our intuitions. If it's logically defensible, what other objection can there be?"

    As I said in my post to monk68, although I estimate the Kalam argument a good one overall, I also think it weaker than the Five Ways. If tomorrow some cogent argument against it were found, I would not be troubled in the least, so I will not bother defending it here.

    Independently of the force of the arguments against actual infinities, there are two problems I see with your attitude. The first one is that given the counter-intuitive consequences of actual infinities, one would think that to tip the scale of plausibility *some* argument *besides* broad logical possibility would be presented; but I have yet to see one. The second is that logical possibility is not really an argument, for it can be used to justify anything and everything if one just has enough chutzpah: just concoct a model of the universe countenancing the possibility.

    Example: I have won the lottery hundred times in a row? What is the big deal; there are infinite copies of the universe in which all possible actual worlds are actualized, I just happened to be living in the right universe.

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  113. Logical possibility?

    3.0321. Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot.

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  114. Dianelos Georgoudis: By mathematics we mean two different things: 1) True propositions about formal systems, and 2) a relationship between truths in these formal systems and reality.

    Hm. Except by mathematics I mean mathematical objects (forms), which are real, because they exist in the mind of God. I don't think the paradoxes are incompatible with our reason at all, or else we wouldn't be able to reason about them when we do mathematics, and we are able. That doesn't mean that we can reason about everything infinite — perhaps there are some infinite realities that we cannot reason about simply because our human minds are too limited. (That would perhaps be a kind of parallel to not being able to understand God.) But even that doesn't mean that those infinities are unintelligible in themselves; only that they are not intelligible to us. 



    Incidentally, it is not true that “there are things we cannot imagine about physics”. It is only true that the naturalistic interpretation of modern physics is often deeply counterintuitive as well as grossly unparsimonious.

    Well, I can't imagine curved space or what an electron is like. I don't know about parsimony (physicists are quite fond of it, it seems to me). But I think you are missing the distinction between imagination and understanding that I'm using here — we can logically reason about infinity in a consistent way (and so there is no contradiction in it), but we cannot picture it (via the senses, so it "seems" paradoxical to us when we try).


    GRodrigues: The first one is that given the counter-intuitive consequences of actual infinities, one would think that to tip the scale of plausibility *some* argument *besides* broad logical possibility would be presented; but I have yet to see one.

    I don't know what such an argument could consist of, though. If something is possible, well, then it's possible. What else is there to show?

    The second is that logical possibility is not really an argument, for it can be used to justify anything and everything if one just has enough chutzpah: just concoct a model of the universe countenancing the possibility.

    Not anything; only what is logically consistent. I'm not saying anything does happen; only that God could have created a physical universe that contained an infinite number of objects (or that lasted an infinite time) if He wanted to. (So I don't follow your lottery example: yes, there are "possible worlds" in which you have won a hundred times, but unfortunately, none of those worlds is actualised. What's the problem with that?)

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  115. @Mr. Green:

    "The second is that logical possibility is not really an argument, for it can be used to justify anything and everything if one just has enough chutzpah: just concoct a model of the universe countenancing the possibility.

    Not anything; only what is logically consistent. I'm not saying anything does happen; only that God could have created a physical universe that contained an infinite number of objects (or that lasted an infinite time) if He wanted to."

    Besides cranks and kooks, does anyone seriously consider the possibility of a logically inconsistent universe?

    I cannot even begin to fathom what God can and cannot do, much less delimit it, so if that is the point you are trying to convey then I can only but agree. But the point argued over the Kalam is whether actual infinities are possible in our universe *given* that our universe is the way it is and we are the way we are. This is also another way of stating why broad logical possibility is not really an argument.

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  116. GRodrigues: I cannot even begin to fathom what God can and cannot do, much less delimit it, so if that is the point you are trying to convey then I can only but agree.

    Apart from the issue of whether "logic" reflects God's nature or is something He chose, we can fathom (at least some of) what God can do, precisely by reasoning out what is possible. I guess that in practice it comes down to what questions you're interested in, but I think it's fine to study, say, Euclidean geometry even if it's only "broad logical possibility" compared to how the physical universe really is. Similarly, I find the question of physical infinities an interesting one. (And I'd reject any appeal to "common sense" in this case with an appeal to authority: Aquinas thought that you couldn't show that our universe was finite, therefore it must be possible.)

    But the point argued over the Kalam is whether actual infinities are possible in our universe *given* that our universe is the way it is and we are the way we are.

    As you mentioned, the Kalam argument is weaker than the Five Ways, so I'm not so interested in it specifically either. (Multiverse speculation is weaker still, but cannot be rejected without resorting to Five-Ways type arguments anyway.) But is a physical infinity impossible given our universe? Some people believe otherwise, but Hilbert's Hotel doesn't prove it. An argument from our actual laws of physics would have to be something like, say, "Infinite objects would mean infinite mass, and infinite gravity entails that the universe couldn't expand, but it does", or along those lines.

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  117. @Mr. Green:

    "I cannot even begin to fathom what God can and cannot do, much less delimit it, so if that is the point you are trying to convey then I can only but agree.

    Apart from the issue of whether "logic" reflects God's nature or is something He chose, we can fathom (at least some of) what God can do, precisely by reasoning out what is possible. I guess that in practice it comes down to what questions you're interested in, but I think it's fine to study, say, Euclidean geometry even if it's only "broad logical possibility" compared to how the physical universe really is. Similarly, I find the question of physical infinities an interesting one. (And I'd reject any appeal to "common sense" in this case with an appeal to authority: Aquinas thought that you couldn't show that our universe was finite, therefore it must be possible.)"

    1. I expressed myself somewhat sloppily. Logical impossibility delimits what God can actualize, but I meant something slightly more specific: how to bridge the chasm from mere logical possibility to say, metaphysical possibility.

    2. My background is in mathematics, and highly infinitary at that -- for example, infinite-dimensional spaces are very common objects. One of my pet projects is to understand Banach space theory in some depth, which is one of the fields of mathematics most densely filled with hair-raising counter-examples, all usually taking the names of their impish creators: James, Hagler, Tsirelson, Enflo, Pisier, Gowers, etc. My latest attempt is to crack the Argyros + Haydon example (from 2010?) of a separable Banach space where every bounded operator is a compact perturbation of the identity -- alas, until now with very little success. I am not trying to pull rank here; this preamble is just to say that I am not completely ignorant of mathematical infinities, or that my intuition is wholly untrained in them.

    3. It is true that Aquinas held that it was not possible to prove that the universe was past-finite; I think he may have conceded too much to his opponents. ATM, I am reading R. McInerny "A first glance at St. Thomas Aquinas", where he discusses this point and even inserts a long quote from the man himself. Truth be told, I do *not* understand Aquinas' argument.

    "As you mentioned, the Kalam argument is weaker than the Five Ways, so I'm not so interested in it specifically either. (Multiverse speculation is weaker still, but cannot be rejected without resorting to Five-Ways type arguments anyway.) But is a physical infinity impossible given our universe? Some people believe otherwise, but Hilbert's Hotel doesn't prove it. An argument from our actual laws of physics would have to be something like, say, "Infinite objects would mean infinite mass, and infinite gravity entails that the universe couldn't expand, but it does", or along those lines."

    Besides an appeal to what is known about our physical universe (as in your argument, or appealing to the second law of thermodynamics or Big-Bang cosmology or the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem or whatever) there are also the philosophical arguments, including thought experiments. In my response to monk68 I gave a reference to a paper by David Oderberg where he argues that a past-infinite universe violates the PSR -- do not ask me to reconstruct the argument, because I am unable to. The issue is not settled, intuitions differ, but my own personal judgment is that the Kalam is a good argument overall.

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  118. Mr Green,

    I don't think the paradoxes are incompatible with our reason at all, or else we wouldn't be able to reason about them when we do mathematics, and we are able.

    Again, I think you are conflating two different cognitive enterprises. Mathematical reasoning is abstract reasoning which takes place within a formal mechanical space. The paradoxes entailed in the premise that actual infinities exist refer to what we reason is physically possible in the actual reality. That an object may exist in mathematics does not imply that it may also in some sense exist in the actual physical reality. (Moreover there is a measure of arbitrariness when one shifts the meaning of a mathematical proposition in order to make it apply to actual physical reality.)

    Let me suggest a case in point. One of the best understood mathematical objects are complex numbers. We know a ton of interesting mathematical truths about complex numbers, and they have proven to be very useful in the construction of models of physical phenomena. Indeed, arguably, modern physics would be impossible without the use of complex numbers. Still, there is no actual referent to complex numbers; there is nothing in the physical reality (we know of) which is referred by the concept of the complex number (1+i). Whereas, plausibly, there are things or properties in actual physical reality which can be seen as referent of natural numbers, or of geometrical primitives, etc. Similarly, I say, the fact that we can define infinite objects in mathematics and discover mathematical truths about them, does not in any way imply or make it more probably that physical reality is such that actual infinities might exist.

    perhaps there are some infinite realities that we cannot reason about simply because our human minds are too limited.

    Yes, and that moves us to a central issue of metaphysics, namely that perhaps reality is such that we are simply not cognitively capable of having metaphysical (as contrasted to merely phenomenological) knowledge about it. I think the answer here is clear: If one wants to ponder metaphysical questions one must commit oneself to the view that one’s cognitive faculties are reliable for that project. But then there is a danger of begging the question while doing metaphysics, because by assuming that one’s cognitive faculties are reliable for metaphysics one excludes those possible worlds which would fit our experience of life and in which our cognitive faculties are not reliable.

    I can't imagine curved space or what an electron is like

    I think that if you find you can’t imagine what curved space and electrons are like then it means that you are trying to interpret these scientific concepts naturalistically. I’d say that the proper theistic understanding is that these concepts refer to orders present in the mind of God and expressed by God’s will in physical creation. (If you happen to be an idealist you can omit the latter bit.) Thus, “curved space” and “electron” refer to bits of an ultimately unitary physical order and not to independent or autonomous physical objects one may try to imagine how they are like by themselves. I am not sure how my claim here fits with A-T metaphysics, but I think it is the natural theistic interpretation of scientific knowledge.

    I don't know about parsimony (physicists are quite fond of it, it seems to me).

    Well, as it turns out the perhaps strongest naturalistic interpretation of modern science posits that reality consists of multiverses within multiverses – which I’d argue multiplies entities beyond all reasonable measure and thus is as unparsimonious as it gets. Incidentally I am talking about how naturalists interpret physics and of how comfortably they appear to be multiplying entities, and not of physicists who are indeed careful to use the principle of parsimony while producing their models of physical phenomena.

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  119. It is my impression that they merely try to show that the existence of a good god is compatible with evil in the world.

    By that same token isn't an evil god compatible with the good in the world?

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  120. and asking himself what it can mean to describe various aspects of his observed experience as either “good” or “evil”. He quickly realizes that unless he can tie those predicates to some non-subjective standard, the predicates themselves become useless within philosophical discourse. So he argues to the position that such terms must be rooted in ontology, resulting in the general doctrines that “good” is convertible with being, and “evil” privation of being.

    I certainly hope there is more to it then just that... as it seems to be based on the underlying assumption that just because we think that "good" and "evil" must be objective to be discussed (a point that I fail to see) it then follows that "good" and "evil" are objective... or that it is not "evil" that is convertible with being.

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  121. I think that if you find you can’t imagine what curved space and electrons are like then it means that you are trying to interpret these scientific concepts naturalistically.

    I don't think that works, Dianelos. Take space, and let's try to imagine it. There are 3 possibilities (and all of them have been thought to be true at various times). (1) Space is finite in extent, and bounded. (2) Space is finite in extent, and unbounded. (3) Space is infinite in extent.

    A-T philosophy was developed in an environment assuming "celestial spheres", of which there was an outermost one that contained all, beyond which there was not. Not anything, including not space. Aristotle thought this. But if you try to imagine it, you find that it is impossible, because you imagine being able to stand outside of the greatest sphere. You imagination cannot match your thinking.

    (2) Modern physics allows for space (3 spatial dimensions) to be curved (in a direction involving a 4th spatial dimension), the universe may be curved around as a closed system that is finite in extent, but has no boundary, like a sphere's surface is finite but has no boundary. We, being limited to perceiving 3 spatial dimensions, cannot actually imagine space as curved, the closest we can come is to imagine local bits of space to be curved "in" other local bits of 3 dimensional space - we never imagine the curving to utilize a 4th dimension. Our imagination cannot keep up with out thinking.

    (3) If space is simply infinite in extent, our imagination cannot actually produce an image of that. We can produce an image of a local portion of space outside of which there is some more space "out there", but when we imagine the "out there" portion we cannot imagine it fully, we can only imagine not seeing the whole of it. Our imagination can only represent to us a portion of it.

    Thus our imaginations CANNOT sufficiently guide us in telling us what the world is like, it has inbred limitations that make it impossible for it to be sufficient.

    If, on the other hand, you attribute one of these models to "the mind of God", you are using your reason to step around the limitations of the imagination, accepting that the imagination is insufficient.

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  122. StoneTop: "I certainly hope there is more to it then just that... as it seems to be based on the underlying assumption that just because we think that "good" and "evil" must be objective to be discussed (a point that I fail to see) it then follows that "good" and "evil" are objective... or that it is not "evil" that is convertible with being."

    This is very interesting. Stephen Law (or it could have been Peter Millican - they both have an evil/anti God Challenge) said something to the effect that good and evil appear to be objective, and would only be convinced otherwise should some evidence arise to the contrary.

    Objective moral values help us to discuss 'oughts' - No objective moral values then no 'oughts', it seems to me. Theism says that good/evil are objective AND provides a rationale for such a belief.

    In the same way, so does classical Theism teach that evil is a privation of good, AND gives a rationale for it. It's those who are suggesting that evil and good have a certain symmetry who then provide no such justification for that assumption.

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  123. Grodrigues: I meant something slightly more specific: how to bridge the chasm from mere logical possibility to say, metaphysical possibility.

    Yes; although I'm not sure the bridge is a long one. Logic says (e.g.) "If something changes, then XYZ". Metaphysics adds, "Something does change". 



    I am not trying to pull rank here; this preamble is just to say that I am not completely ignorant of mathematical infinities, or that my intuition is wholly untrained in them.

    Oh, certainly. But don't any of our intuitions that make infinity problematic rely our the limitations of our imaginations? Why should we think that that poses a limitation for physics? In fact, there's a different approach: I would say that actual infinities already do exist, since all mathematical objects exist (in the mind of God). And thus infinities could also exist physically, since a "possible world" is just the abstracted forms, which already exist.



    3. It is true that Aquinas held that it was not possible to prove that the universe was past-finite; I think he may have conceded too much to his opponents.

    Perhaps; it could be that he felt it was too difficult to prove it, rather than that it might be true. On the other hand, if something is logically possible, how could God not be able to create it? 



    In my response to monk68 I gave a reference to a paper by David Oderberg where he argues that a past-infinite universe violates the PSR

    Thanks for the reference to Oderberg. "Traversal of the Infinite" doesn't specifically address the question of actual infinities, and I'm not sure about the argument from the PSR. In particular, the Tristam Shandy examples are like the Grim Reaper examples in that one cannot derive a general impossibility from a specific instance. Maybe those examples are impossible, but that does not convince me that an infinite God could not create a perfectly innocuous universe containing an infinite number of particles of stardust.

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  124. Dianelos Georgoudis: Mathematical reasoning is abstract reasoning which takes place within a formal mechanical space. […] That an object may exist in mathematics does not imply that it may also in some sense exist in the actual physical reality.

    All reasoning is abstract. Whether any mathematical object can correspond to a physical object depends on what we mean by "physical". I propose that physics = geometry + sensibility (i.e. possessing qualia like colour, texture, etc.). Since qualia are orthogonal to mathematical properties, they can be combined in any way, so any mathematical system could correspond to a physical system. Or perhaps physics = math (forms) + prime matter; again, there is nothing to stop God from applying some prime matter to any possible mathematical object.

    there is nothing in the physical reality (we know of) which is referred by the concept of the complex number (1+i). Whereas, plausibly, there are things or properties in actual physical reality which can be seen as referent of natural numbers, or of geometrical primitives, etc.

    I think that begs the question. As you said, imaginary numbers turn up in plenty of places in physics. To me, that means nothing else than that they are "referents" of physical reality, no less than the (arguably) more "obvious" connection to counting integers, etc. In other words, in both cases all that's going on is participation in forms. Participation in one mathematical form is no better or worse than participating in another, regardless of how our intuition or imagination feels about the matter.



    because by assuming that one’s cognitive faculties are reliable for metaphysics one excludes those possible worlds which would fit our experience of life and in which our cognitive faculties are not reliable.

    Sure, but if something is beyond our abilities, there's not much else we can do in practice. But still, it is generally accepted that even things we cannot understand will not generate logical inconsistencies (e.g. we cannot understand the Trinity, but we can at least rely on its not entailing a contradiction). I claim that actual (physical) infinities are possible; you could, along these lines, say instead, "As far as we know, they're possible." But at least neither of us can say flat out that it's impossible.

    

Thus, “curved space” and “electron” refer to bits of an ultimately unitary physical order and not to independent or autonomous physical objects one may try to imagine how they are like by themselves. I am not sure how my claim here fits with A-T metaphysics, but I think it is the natural theistic interpretation of scientific knowledge.

    I think Tony gave a good response to this. You seem to be divorcing "things as they are in themselves" from "things as science sees them", and that doesn't fit in with A-T. For Aristotelians, to understand that something is round is to have the very same roundness in my mind that is in the object itself.

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  125. Stephen Law (or it could have been Peter Millican - they both have an evil/anti God Challenge) said something to the effect that good and evil appear to be objective, and would only be convinced otherwise should some evidence arise to the contrary.

    Isn't it interesting how "objective moral values" always seem to correspond to the values of the person doing the talking? For example some think that it is objectively good to stone a woman to death for going outside without a male family member to escort them... while others say that would be "evil".

    Objective moral values help us to discuss 'oughts' - No objective moral values then no 'oughts', it seems to me.

    Really? I have no trouble discussing 'oughts' without relying on objective moral values. That aside... saying "we need moral values to be objective to discuss what we ought to do, therefor there are objective moral values" doesn't seem very reasonable.

    In the same way, so does classical Theism teach that evil is a privation of good, AND gives a rationale for it

    How wouldn't the reverse of that be similarly rationalized? With good being a privatation of evil?

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  126. "Isn't it interesting how "objective moral values" always seem to correspond to the values of the person doing the talking?"

    Yes, it is interesting.

    "For example some think that it is objectively good to stone a woman to death for going outside without a male family member to escort them... while others say that would be "evil"."

    What do you think, and why?

    "Really? I have no trouble discussing 'oughts' without relying on objective moral values. That aside... saying "we need moral values to be objective to discuss what we ought to do, therefor there are objective moral values" doesn't seem very reasonable."

    Then how can you be discussing oughts? If one claims that there are objective moral duties (or oughts), as Dr Law does (I think), then surely that means they are binding. However, if the grounding for that belief is simply one's own opinion (Dr Law gives 'intuition' as evidence for that grounding), then I think they are not talking about objective moral values. This is my point, Theism grounds them in God and gives the rationale for it - that's reasonable. Maybe there are other grounds - have you any thoughts?

    "How wouldn't the reverse of that be similarly rationalized? With good being a privatation of evil?"

    Perhaps you could suggest a way that could be done.

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  127. Isn't it interesting how "objective moral values" always seem to correspond to the values of the person doing the talking? For example some think that it is objectively good to stone a woman to death for going outside without a male family member to escort them... while others say that would be "evil".

    It may be interesting, but its irrelevant. When it is claimed that a naturalistic picture of reality rules out objective good, it means objective good in a general sense. The entire enterprise must be abandoned, regardless of the details. That is, whatever does happen to be good, it is so objectively, and whatever doesn't happen to be, it objectively isn't.

    What is specifically good or evil is beside the point. If naturalism is true, nothing in principle can be labeled either way.

    -Truant

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  128. How does one do an "evidential" critique of metaphysical theories? And do the assumptions about evidence themselves get a free ride, or is there an evidential critique of them as well? Let's see the actual evidence that's bragged about so much but somehow never is specified.

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  129. Yes, it is interesting.

    Which is rather contradictory... if morality is objective then burning someone at the stake cannot be both "good" and "evil".

    What do you think, and why?

    Well I do think it is not moral to stone someone to death... but that opinion comes from my upbringing, in which I was taught that men and women are equals.

    This is my point, Theism grounds them in God and gives the rationale for it - that's reasonable. Maybe there are other grounds - have you any thoughts?

    Sure... but you can do that with any arbitrary set of morals. Your "them" can just as easily include "it is moral for pre-pubescent girls to be married to older men" as it can "it is moral to only have sex with ones spouse".

    We can all agree that "good" is good and "evil" is bad... but what acts qualify as good or evil is very much up for debate. Which puts a dampener on any claims that any particular moral code describes what is objectively good or evil.

    Perhaps you could suggest a way that could be done.

    Sure... take the argument for evil being a privitization of good and swap the terms good / evil (and other loaded language in the argument).

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  130. It may be interesting, but its irrelevant.

    Really? It strikes me as highly relevant. Unless you are saying that stoning a woman to death is objectively good and objectively evil.

    That is, whatever does happen to be good, it is so objectively, and whatever doesn't happen to be, it objectively isn't.

    And yet we can hardly agree on an event being good... different cultures and different upbringings lead to different outlooks on morality. For the ancient Aztecs sacrificing people to the Sun God was a good act, while you and I may both agree that such an act is "evil"

    What is specifically good or evil is beside the point. If naturalism is true, nothing in principle can be labeled either way.

    Only if you insist on good / evil being objectively determinable (like gravity). If you don't require that everything you see as evil is part of some objective set of evil acts then one can easily discuss what is good and what is evil... Indeed such discussions become more interesting without the crutch of "well god says it is good / god says it is evil"

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  131. StoneTops said: "Indeed such discussions become more interesting without the crutch of "well god says it is good / god says it is evil""

    Instead you get the "crutch" of, popular media, current trend, activist group X or "my upbringing" says so.

    Classical Theism isn't about Divine Command Theory (God says so and in the process makes it good). So that point is irrelevant to the Classic A-T view of God and this blog. You should engage Vox Day perhaps.

    BTW don't you think it makes you look immature in not capitalising God?

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  132. StoneTops:

    "Which is rather contradictory... if morality is objective then burning someone at the stake cannot be both "good" and "evil"."

    Even if morality is objective, it does not follow that everyone's interpretation has to be correct.

    People may very well think they're doing good, but could be doing evil in the process. Communist atheists were doing evil in murdering millions of people but they thought they were socially engineering a new utopian society.

    I don't think classical theism allows one to ground any set of arbitrary morals in God. They would not logically follow. But your point of view does not ground morality in anything at all, and that subjective morality may be just as arbitrary as you suggest.

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  133. "Sure... take the argument for evil being a privitization of good and swap the terms good / evil (and other loaded language in the argument)."

    That wouldn't work with the classical view of good/evil. It would be like saying that light is simply the absence of darkness, which I'm sure you would agree is nonsensical. I thought the Swiss Cheese analogy was helpful earlier in the thread: did you read that?

    As regards loaded language, Dr law attempted to sidestep such issues by giving his own definitions of good and evil - in other words, loading it differently. The problem is that all language is 'loaded'. How would you define good and evil?

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  134. StoneTop said... And yet we can hardly agree on an event being good... different cultures and different upbringings lead to different outlooks on morality.

    Different cultures and upbringings agree on plenty, but that is not the point. You seem to be confusing "objective" with "obvious". And "morality" with "moral code". Please check a dictionary.

    Well I do think it is not moral to stone someone to death... but that opinion comes from my upbringing, in which I was taught that men and women are equals.

    Oh, so it's all right to stone your daughters as long as you stone your sons too? I hope you have better reasons than that.



    We can all agree that "good" is good and "evil" is bad... but what acts qualify as good or evil is very much up for debate. Which puts a dampener on any claims that any particular moral code describes what is objectively good or evil.

    So because scientists disagree about some things, you think physical reality is not objective. Like I said, please find out what we mean by "objective" and "morality".

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  135. StoneTop writes:

    “just because we think that "good" and "evil" must be objective to be discussed (a point that I fail to see)”

    and again:

    “Really? I have no trouble discussing 'oughts' without relying on objective moral values.”

    Of course, anyone can “discuss” anything, but philosophy (as opposed to mere “discussion”) entails a purposeful dialectical attempt to arrive at truth: the adequation of the mind to reality (which, at minimum, assumes both parties reject radical skepticism about reality or the intellect’s capacity to form and communicate concepts which accurately depict the real). A person who rejects this minimal assessment of the philosophical enterprise may be an enjoyable person with which to drink beer and discuss sports at a local pub, but his opinions hardly need be taken seriously, for he rejects from the outset, that the fruit of any such “discussion” can ever issue in a conclusion which might require one or both parties to change their mind about the nature of the real. Even if a person holds that some aspects of the real are knowable and communicable by all (say the natural sciences) but that others (say ethics) do not admit of a commonly knowable reality to which each mind can and should be adequated; in any subject area where such a view prevails, there can only, and ever, be opinion with regard to that subject area. Working together to pursue or uncover the truth is the business of philosophy. Those who fundamentally reject that basic notion in some communicable domain, yet continue to utilize sophisticated speech “as if” what they say should have the force of persuasion for their hearers, are sophists. Sophists can and should be ignored (other than to point out sophistry when encased in complicate speech).

    Suppose one sits down at a local pub and begins a conversation this way:

    “I would like to have a ‘discussion’ wherein I will be predicating the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ of all sorts of things, events, people, circumstances, human actions, etc. However, I should like you to know, up front, that when I describe things in my experience as ‘good’ or ‘evil’, I am merely expressing my subjective assessment of various aspects of my experience. I don’t expect you to see things the same way, nor do I think there is any standard outside our own minds which we could ever agree upon, or point to, as somehow independently determinative for describing ‘this’ or ‘that’ as either ‘good’ or ‘evil’. So reaching agreement about what aspects of our experience (if any) really are ‘good’ or ‘evil’ is not something I think can be done, nor am I interested in attempting it. I just want to have a ‘discussion’, since I have no trouble discussing ‘oughts’ without relying on objective moral values”.

    To which one might reasonably respond:

    “But what’s the point of such a discussion if from the outset you are convinced that we can only, in principle, begin with subjective opinions and end with the same?”

    To which the person wishing to have a discussion might respond:

    “The point is to have a good ‘discussion’ – why does everything have to be so serious or ‘objective’ with you, can’t we just shoot-the-bull?”

    To which one might likely respond:

    “Sure we can, but in that case, let’s talk about something more interesting like women or fast cars.”

    cntd . . .

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  136. cntd

    This is why I wrote:

    “He [the classical theist, or anyone else who thinks for two seconds about what he is doing when throwing ‘good’ and ‘evil’ predicate terms around] quickly realizes that unless he can tie those predicates to some non-subjective standard, the predicates themselves become useless within philosophical discourse [not mere ‘discussion’].”

    StoneTop writes:

    “as it seems to be based on the underlying assumption that just because we think that "good" and "evil" must be objective to be discussed (a point that I fail to see) it then follows that "good" and "evil" are objective”

    This is an absurd construal. No, the classical theist (and any non-sophist), maintains that IF two or more persons are going to use terms like “good” and “evil” in philosophical discourse (as opposed to mere ‘discussion’ where there is no ‘truth of the matter’ on the table), THEN they had best begin by attempting to locate some mutually agreed upon standard, or non-subjective, defensible, grounds for using those predicate terms in a consistent and principled way. Otherwise, the very meaning of the terms remain ambiguous and unhelpful as applied to any aspect of human experience (whether things, acts, circumstances, whatever). From the mere recognition that such terms are useless within philosophical discourse without first establishing some “objective” grounds for their very use, of course it does not follow that there necessarily are such objective grounds. Who ever made such a silly argument?

    Such recognition merely indicates what must be the first order of philosophical business when attempting to construct or promulgate any moral or ethical position. Accordingly, the classical theist position (inherited and developed from Aristotle), having considered this basic problem, claims to have located a non-subjective ground for the use of “good” and “evil” predicates, through a carefully constructed philosophy of nature and ontology based in experiential/empirical observation open to all men. I briefly (very briefly) sketched that approach in this thread starting with my Nov 14th 10:58 comment. In light of that account, comments such as the following are philosophically confused:

    “or that it is not "evil" that is convertible with being”

    Or

    “How wouldn't the reverse of that be similarly rationalized? With good being a privatation of evil?”

    For the point of appealing to ontology (notions of being or privation of being) in order to ground the use of “good” and “evil” predicates is to establish the very meaning of these terms in the first place. Without such an objective grounding, the terms remain, as I say, philosophically useless. Given such a grounding; the grounding itself determines their meaning and use. With such an ontic grounding already in hand, simply switching word symbols (g-o-o-d, for e-v-i-l), besides being arbitrary, would not in the least undermine the explanatory power and application of the ontic principle as an objective foundation for philosophical ethics. No doubt, one can raise philosophical objections to the ontic account of philosophical ethics, or propose some other non-subjective grounds for the use of “good” and “evil” predicates. That would be a worthwhile philosophical discussion. But to pretend that such predicates are useful in philosophical discourse (as opposed to mere opinion mongering) absent any non-subjective basis for their use and application is sophistry. And sophistry need not be engaged (other than to be identified for what it is) for all the reasons I gave above.

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  137. Instead you get the "crutch" of, popular media, current trend, activist group X or "my upbringing" says so.

    Well at that point you are relying on the existence of something that can be objectively demonstrated (the moral system taught in the US can be demonstrated to objectively exist, even if it cannot be objectively shown to be moral). Further it can be quite directly questioned (why do people in the US think that it is immoral to stone women to death?).

    Classical Theism isn't about Divine Command Theory (God says so and in the process makes it good).

    So there is something greater then your deity that determines which actions are moral/immoral?

    BTW don't you think it makes you look immature in not capitalising God?

    No, because I am referring to any arbitrary god, not your particular deity of choice.

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  138. Even if morality is objective, it does not follow that everyone's interpretation has to be correct.

    Right... but yours just happens to be the correct one?

    People may very well think they're doing good, but could be doing evil in the process. Communist atheists were doing evil in murdering millions of people but they thought they were socially engineering a new utopian society.

    We could also think we are doing good when we allow women to walk around un-escorted by a male relative... yet really we are doing a great evil.

    I don't think classical theism allows one to ground any set of arbitrary morals in God. They would not logically follow.

    Sure you can... though some sets may be logically inconsistent (it is moral to wear a red hat, it is immoral to wear a red hat) as long as the moral set is free of such logical inconsistencies it fits into classic theism.

    But your point of view does not ground morality in anything at all, and that subjective morality may be just as arbitrary as you suggest.

    Not at all.. it leaves one open to ground ones morality based on intended goals and observed facts. Sure it leaves things rather open-ended... but life itself is quite open-ended.

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  139. Different cultures and upbringings agree on plenty, but that is not the point.

    So slavery is good?

    Oh, so it's all right to stone your daughters as long as you stone your sons too? I hope you have better reasons than that.



    It would certainly be a more consistent moral code were that to hold true... however going down that route just leads to the rather strange scenario where nobody can go outside alone.

    So because scientists disagree about some things, you think physical reality is not objective. Like I said, please find out what we mean by "objective" and "morality".

    Are scientists disagreeing about these "things" or are they disagreeing about their idea about those "things"?

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  140. >So slavery is good?

    It's good for the slave owner who has a source of free labor. OTOH it is good for the slave if one belongs to a particular slave culture that has laws on treating slaves justly. As such you are required to feed your slave and treat him justly. Which is a better alternative to "freedom" in extreme poverty and starvation.

    But then you have to define "slavery". A human being with basic human rights who owes obligatory servitude and labor to someone or a human being with no rights who is treated no better than an animal beast of burden.

    All this is interesting but it is also a off topic tangent.

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  141. >>Classical Theism isn't about Divine Command Theory (God says so and in the process makes it good).

    >So there is something greater then your deity that determines which actions are moral/immoral?

    Since when is the Classical Theistic God a moral agent like Voxday's Theistic Personalist deity?

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  142. Of course, anyone can “discuss” anything, but philosophy (as opposed to mere “discussion”) entails a purposeful dialectical attempt to arrive at truth: the adequation of the mind to reality (which, at minimum, assumes both parties reject radical skepticism about reality or the intellect’s capacity to form and communicate concepts which accurately depict the real).

    Still not following how that necessitates objective morality. We can still objectively discuss morality (person X believes A is moral, person Y believes B is moral).

    Working together to pursue or uncover the truth is the business of philosophy.

    And if that truth is that the specifics of ones moral code (is it evil to eat bacon, is it good give some food to a starving person) are determined by ones life experiences?

    THEN they had best begin by attempting to locate some mutually agreed upon standard, or non-subjective, defensible, grounds for using those predicate terms in a consistent and principled way.

    So if two philosophers come to the conclusion that stoning a woman to death if she is not a virgin on her wedding night is good then it is good?

    Now I do agree that before one can have a meaningful discussion on a subject that there has to be some common ground for that discussion to take place... but that does not make that common ground "objective" as a third person can always come along and disagree with our shared ground.

    Much of the problem likely arises from the simple fact that you and I are likely to come from similar cultural backgrounds, so we are likely to share some of the same baseline assumptions regarding moral behavior. As such we could reach a mutually agreed upon standard that we both found defensible (it is not moral to stone women to death). Yet at the same time our mirror earth counterparts who were raised in a society where stoning women is seen as moral could reach the opposite conclusion.

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  143. For the point of appealing to ontology (notions of being or privation of being) in order to ground the use of “good” and “evil” predicates is to establish the very meaning of these terms in the first place. Without such an objective grounding, the terms remain, as I say, philosophically useless. Given such a grounding; the grounding itself determines their meaning and use.

    As I said before... yes we have to have a shared baseline to have a meaningful discussion. However that does not mean that our particular shared baseline is the objectively true. Two other individuals could come up with a shared baseline that cannot be reconciled with our own.

    Consider it this way... you and I could come to the agreement that it is not immoral for a woman to sit next to a non-male relative while ridding on the bus. Could two other individuals come to the opposite conclusion? Which position represents the objective moral position?

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  144. Since when is the Classical Theistic God a moral agent like Voxday's Theistic Personalist deity?

    Again... so your deity has no role in the status of an act as "good" or "evil"?

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  145. >Again... so your deity has no role in the status of an act as "good" or "evil"?

    Rather you are defining Good and Evil strictly in moral terms and not ontological or philosophical terms.

    After all I said "Since when is the Classical Theistic God a moral agent....etc".

    God is the metaphysical source of all Goodness and thus the goodness found in any good moral system.

    But it doesn't logically follow God is a moral agent.

    After all is the Queen of England Her own subject?

    Is the Law under itstelf?

    You need to do more reading Tops.

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  146. Plus you still have no working definition of Good in any sense(moral, ontological, metaphysical, philosophical etc).

    Just vague ambiguity and appeals to emotion.

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  147. Tony,

    Your imagination cannot match your thinking.

    I am inclined to think that if I cannot imagine something then I cannot understand it either. There is no such thing as understanding X while not being able to conceptualize X.

    Take space, and let's try to imagine it.

    I agree with you that we cannot imagine infinite *physical* space (or perhaps I should say infinite actual quantities). Two relevant things in this context.

    First, I find that we don’t suffer the same limitation in the context of mathematics. I have no problem imagining infinite sets, seeing how different infinite sets may have different cardinalities, etc. The relevant difference I suggest is this: Mathematics is an abstract business in the sense that we are free to suggest *any* mechanism (aka “mathematical object”) and discover truths about it. Physics, on the contrary, refers to the mechanical order present in the physical phenomena we perceive, which (on scientific realism) also describes the *one* mechanism which produces these phenomena for us to perceive and think and discover truths about. Here I mean “physics” in the broadest possible sense, namely in the sense that even a 3 years old child discovers physical knowledge. In the long cognitive business of physics we get a sense of imagination which appears to recoil from the idea of infinite physical things. Which sense I submit is made concrete through the various paradoxes that people put forward when arguing against the possible existence of physical infinities. Thus there is big difference between possibilities within the abstract project of math and the concrete project of physics.

    Secondly, assuming you agree with the above factual claims about the human condition, it is interesting to ponder why that difference exists. I am not sure what the explanation within the naturalistic frame of thought will be, even though I think there is a good naturalistic explanation to be given. Within the theistic frame of thought the explanation is rather obvious: God has given us reliable cognitive faculties which are such that when we take a wrong turn we encounter paradoxes. Thus paradoxes work in the same way that walls work when we are finding our way within a house with many rooms. One stays away from the walls, and similarly one stays away from the paradoxes. The fact that mathematical infinities do not strike us as paradoxical probably means that there is nothing unreasonable about the logical possibility of infinities, and the fact that physical infinities do strike us as paradoxical probably means that they don’t exist.

    Let me now wade into deep waters. An age-long and fundamental problem in epistemology (and thus in philosophy) is what Robert Fogelin calls the “resistance problem”, namely of how to ascertain that one’s thinking escapes the conceptual level and takes traction with actual reality. What is there fixed to hang one’s thoughts from? Naturalists take it that what is fixed is the mechanical nature of reality, but it turns out it is difficult to bridge this fixed point with actual rationality. Theists take it that what is fixed is a perfectly rational God and thus that our reason (with all its limitations) is ultimately securely grounded and is therefore to be trusted (including and particularly in those cases where our reason leads us to reject a previous held belief). This implicit trust leads the theistic thinker into properly assuming that physical infinities do not exist – which idea, interestingly enough, does not fail to fit with the current state of scientific realism. In general, a big difference between theistic and naturalistic metaphysics is that theists assume that reality is intelligible and go from there, whereas naturalists must doubt (and with good reason, given the naturalistic interpretation of evolution) whether our minds are made to understand reality.

    [continues bellow]

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  148. [2nd part, continued from above]

    the universe may be curved around as a closed system that is finite in extent, but has no boundary, like a sphere's surface is finite but has no boundary. We, being limited to perceiving 3 spatial dimensions, cannot actually imagine space as curved [snip]

    I think you are here making and equivocation which Bertrand Russell warned us about when he wrote: “When it is said that light is waves, what is really meant is that waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is independent of us and our senses.” Similarly, physical space itself, which is an intrinsic property of our experience of life, is *not* curved but flat, as we all know by acquaintance. What is “curved” is the abstract space *within* the scientific models of physical phenomena. But that space is not what we normally call “space” when referring to our experience of life.

    Let me clarify what I mean. Imagine an unbounded finite universe having a diameter of only 100 meters and in which the speed of light is 50 meters per second. How would physical phenomena in such a universe be like? First, in any direction we looked we would see an image of ourselves hanging out there in a distance of 100 meters (that’s putting it roughly). When we raise an arm we would see our images raising an arm after two seconds. If we are making a drawing we could leave it on the floor, walk 100 meters away, and then pick the very same drawing up to continue. I submit that a) this kind of experience of life is entirely imaginable, b) that in that universe we would experience space as being entirely flat, c) that the scientific model which would describe our experiences of physical phenomena in that universe would employ within its mathematical formalism a radically curved “space”. My point then is that we must not conflate the original meaning of words (such as “space”, “time”, “force”, “person”, etc) with the same words scientists use to refer to symbols that appear in their equations.

    [continues bellow]

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  149. [3rd part, continued from above]

    How the confusion of conflating works from experience and from physics came to pass is I think not difficult to see: It’s natural (and efficient) to imagine that what we see when we look around causes what we see, in other words it is natural to believe in scientific realism. Indeed for a long time the models that physicists produced to describe physical phenomena, could very naturally be assumed to also describe the underlying physical reality. This way was also quite profitable, because we find it easier to think about mathematical models when visualizing them in physical space. Thus for a long time it seemed not only natural but also appropriate to use the names of concepts which refer to our experience of life in order to name symbols within the abstract mathematical models which physicists worked with. And it was natural for physicists to think that their models not only describe phenomena but also the underlying reality. That comfortable picture was burst by quantum mechanics. Here for the first time physicists first developed the mathematical models and then tried to imagine what kind of physical model they might represent. In my judgment this project of “interpreting” QM has failed, for there are now several naturalistic models which are radically different from each other, and each is deeply implausible to our reason. (Which fact the naturalist often interprets as showing that our brain is not well-suited for understanding reality, and the theist interprets, or should interpret, as showing that scientific realism is false.) Incidentally, physicists have not stopped using names out of our experience of life to name their symbols, but have stopped pretending there is any real connection. Thus they use names like “charge”, “spin”, “up and down quarks”, or “strings” – without any (or with the feeblest) of relation to the respective concepts in our experience of life.

    If, on the other hand, you attribute one of these models to "the mind of God", you are using your *reason* to step around the limitations of the imagination, accepting that the imagination is insufficient.

    I am indeed stepping around the limitations of the imagination, but not because I hold that my imagination is insufficient, but because I hold that the limitations of the imagination are useful to keep me from wandering into intellectual neverland.

    Please try to see the issue from within a theistic set of mind. The theist accepts that our reason is limited and requires hard work in order to produce good fruit, but also holds that our reason is ultimately God-given, and therefore that its nature and structure are fundamentally sound. Thus what you see as “limitations of the imagination”, the theist sees (or should see) as a God created property of our cognitive faculties which keeps us from going where it would be pointless to go. What you probably see as “fallible intuitions” the theist sees (or should see) as the foundations of all knowledge we have, and to the degree that our intuitions are fallible they are fallible in a way we have the cognitive capacity to recover from. Further, consider what blessing and great joy it is to discover the truth, and how that blessing entails one’s hard work towards that discovery. Finally consider how on some level the great achievements of the human mind (and of the human spirit) comport better with the theistic view of a personal, free, and creative mind, rather than with the naturalistic view of a mechanically (and thus blindly) evolving reality in which our brains are pushed along.

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  150. Rather you are defining Good and Evil strictly in moral terms and not ontological or philosophical terms.

    The terms rather clearly imply a moral framework... Or can you name an act that is good but immoral, evil but moral?

    After all is the Queen of England Her own subject?

    Does a "good" queen order the murder of her suspects? How about a "good" deity ordering its creations to murder each other?

    How about... if the queen ordered everyone to wear a red hat on a given day, but then didn't wear a red hat herself would you say that her rules were consistent?

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  151. OTOH it is good for the slave if one belongs to a particular slave culture that has laws on treating slaves justly.

    Like how it is OK to beat a slave, as long as it takes them a few days to bleed out?

    And the question isn't off-topic... it raises serious questions about a moral codes' claim to being objective. If it is objective then can it change over time?

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  152. StoneTop said... So slavery is good?

    While you're checking the dictionary, look up "so" as well. You seem to be under the misapprehension that it is used to introduce a non-sequitur.



    Are scientists disagreeing about these "things" or are they disagreeing about their idea about those "things"?

    The things. (Feel free to add "physics" or "science" to your list.)

    So there is something greater then your deity that determines which actions are moral/immoral?

    You'll need a dictionary of philosophy for this one: look up "divine command theory" and "natural law".

    No, because I am referring to any arbitrary god, not your particular deity of choice.

    Arbitrary beings that might be called "gods" are not in the same boat as the Ultimate Being. This is a Big Deal for most of the arguments that go on around here. Check your philosophical dictionary for "Pure Act".

    The terms rather clearly imply a moral framework... Or can you name an act that is good but immoral, evil but moral?

    You are setting up false dichotomies. In some contexts, "good" simply means "morally good"; in other contexts, it can refer to something with no moral application. See "moral", "good".

    And the question isn't off-topic... it raises serious questions about a moral codes' claim to being objective. If it is objective then can it change over time?

    It raises serious questions about why you didn't avail yourself of the aid of a dictionary when it was suggested to you. Once again, you clearly do not understand what "objective" means. There is no point having a conversation about it until you find out.

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  153. @Tops
    >The terms rather clearly imply a moral framework... Or can you name an act that is good but immoral, evil but moral?

    Either/or fallacy, or the Fallacy of the false alternative. What about something that is good but Amoral like Science? Something Amoral is neither coherently moral or immoral. Science is not morally good or morally evil it is amoral only a moral agent can use it as such. But in Aristotilan terms of Good being defined as desirable, useful and or virtuous. Science certainly falls in the useful category and thus is good but mot the virtuous category. Just as God falls into the First Desired slot.

    >Does a "good" queen order the murder of her suspects? How about a "good" deity ordering its creations to murder each other?

    It's an analogy not an unequivocal comparison between a human ruler vs Self-Existing Being Itself.

    Obviously a human Queen is subject to the moral and natural law and is a moral agent but Traditionally she doesn't commit a crime if she fails to pay taxes(which go to her anyway). Since that is a civil law she is above.

    It's also a non-answer to the question. The correct answer is no a Queen is not Her own Subject.

    >Like how it is OK to beat a slave, as long as it takes them a few days to bleed out?

    >And the question isn't off-topic...

    Clearly it is off topic. The topic here is Stephen Law's Evil God challenge not recycling the horse crap one reads in the nonsense of Hector Avaros and his tedious polemics against the Laws of the Old Testament in which he invariably assumes a Protestant Fundamentalist interpretive hermeneutic of the Bible which by definition is still a non-starter on a blog filled with Catholics who still reject Scripture Alone and the Perspicuity of Scripture.

    Sorry. Argue Philosophy here save your anti-fundie biblical polemics for a fundie Bible blog.

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  154. I am inclined to think that if I cannot imagine something then I cannot understand it either. There is no such thing as understanding X while not being able to conceptualize X.

    Dianelos, your entire argument is arguing against something that is completely other than what I was talking about. You are using "imagine" in a different sense than the standard usage around in these here parts. In Feser's domain, imagination is ordinarily assumed to be the interior faculty that can re-present to the awareness sensible "objects" even when they are not there. It is STRICTLY about sensibles, objects of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

    The faculty of "conceptualizing" is an absolutely different faculty, one that can use the imagination but is not limited by it. We can conceptualize "justice" even though we cannot imagine seeing "justice" or hearing it. We can imagine seeing an action which has the quality of justice, but what we imagine is the visible representation of the action, and the action is not justice.

    Likewise, when we do geometry about the angles of a triangle adding up to 2 right angles, we use the imagination to represent interiorly some specific example of a triangle: we imagine either a scalene, or an isosceles, or an equilateral triangle. But the science that we perform does not rest in the particularities of that particular triangle we are imagining: the logic of the syllogism applies just as well to an isosceles triangle even though we are imagining a scalene triangle - it applies universally to triangles in virtue of their triangular natures, and that nature cannot be seen, though it can be conceptualized.

    First, I find that we don’t suffer the same limitation in the context of mathematics. I have no problem imagining infinite sets, seeing how different infinite sets may have different cardinalities, etc.

    Correction: you have no problem THINKING about infinite sets. When you use your imagination during the process of said thinking, you imagine seeing something like a grouping of the written numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on off into the distance until the numerals get too small to see. You are not presenting the entirety of the list in your imagination. But you can think about the set quite legitimately, because the faculty whereby you think is capable of processes that are not limited in particularity and materiality.

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  155. While you're checking the dictionary, look up "so" as well. You seem to be under the misapprehension that it is used to introduce a non-sequitur.



    You know for people who claim that not only is there an objectively good moral code out there, but that their moral code corresponds to that moral code there seems to be a great deal of difficulty answering a simple yes or no question.

    Maybe an easier question is in order... Genghis Khan comes to a city somewhere in central Asia... he orders his troops to kill every adult male and married woman, but to take the younger males as slaves (and the women as sex slaves).

    Is Genghis Khan's order moral or immoral? Are the warriors who follow his commands acting morally or immoral?

    The things. (Feel free to add "physics" or "science" to your list.)

    Right... they are arguing over their model of objective reality fitting with objective reality.

    You'll need a dictionary of philosophy for this one: look up "divine command theory" and "natural law".

    I have... and from what I read it is your deity that determines the morality of a given act.

    Arbitrary beings that might be called "gods" are not in the same boat as the Ultimate Being. This is a Big Deal for most of the arguments that go on around here.

    And your particular deity of choice represents only one possible "Ultimate Being" out of the many possible "Ultimate Beings".

    Once again, you clearly do not understand what "objective" means.

    "A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject."

    Does that definitions suffice? Is slavery moral or immoral independent of the beliefs of the people involved? (by the way... I find it very interesting that there are multiple definitions of objective)

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  156. Science is not morally good or morally evil it is amoral only a moral agent can use it as such.

    You seem to be missing the point... I'm not asking about things that are a moral... I'm asking for a thing that is either good and immoral, or evil and moral.

    If I describe a day as "good" I'm not making a moral judgement on that day... I'm just stating my subjective view on the quality of that day.

    But in Aristotilan terms of Good being defined as desirable, useful and or virtuous. Science certainly falls in the useful category and thus is good but mot the virtuous category.

    You and I may agree that science is "good" because we find it useful... however just because we agree doesn't mean that two other people cannot look at what science has done and view the results as non-useful (arguing perhaps that all the deaths / environmental damage caused outweighs the upside experienced by a small number of people).

    It's an analogy not an unequivocal comparison between a human ruler vs Self-Existing Being Itself.

    And? Can a deity order its creations/worshipers to slaughter its creations/non-worshipers and still be considered a "good" deity?

    The correct answer is no a Queen is not Her own Subject.

    So if the Queen made murder a crime, then murdered someone she could not be arrested for it?

    This raises a rather interesting question... is it logical for a rule maker to make rules to which they are not subject to? For example... I told my step-daughter (who is four years old) that she could not have candy before lunch. Would it not then be hypocritical for me to break out a Snickers and start chewing?

    How about the USA... where the people are the rulers and the ruled?

    Protestant Fundamentalist interpretive hermeneutic of the Bible which by definition is still a non-starter on a blog filled with Catholics who still reject Scripture Alone and the Perspicuity of Scripture.

    I'm not seeing how your white-washing interpretation of the OT matters when what is written in the OT is exceptionally clear on these points.

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  157. Dianelos Georgoudis: God has given us reliable cognitive faculties which are such that when we take a wrong turn we encounter paradoxes.

    To add to Tony's point above, our God-given faculties encounter contradiction when we make a wrong turn (intellectually speaking), rather than a paradox per se. I would compare paradoxes to optical illusions: your sight does not fail when you see an optical illusion, it's quite up to the task. But we are used to interpreting the things we see (e.g. extrapolating three-dimensional objects which would be portrayed as in the image), and that interpretation fails when we are faced with an optical illusion. Since I'm following the same distinction Tony made between our intellectual faculty and our sensory ones, I see paradoxes as something "funny", not false, to our intellects much like an optical illusion is "funny", but not false, to our sense of sight.

    c) that the scientific model which would describe our experiences of physical phenomena in that universe would employ within its mathematical formalism a radically curved “space”.

    Actually, you've described a "wrap-around" space, not a curved one (though of course the two can go together). In any case, you seem to be promoting a sort of "scientific anti-realism" in which science does not really tell us about reality. It is true that a model of something is not the thing itself, but nonetheless Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy regards accurate science as telling us something accurate about physical reality. To say that space is merely "treated" as curved for scientific convenience is like saying the earth is "really" flat, and we only treat it as round for geographical convenience. After all, the world "looks" flat (hills and valleys aside) if you look out the window with your God-given senses. But in the Aristotelian tradition, if the earth can be accurately modelled by a sphere then there is something really spherical about it. (The model may of course be wrong, or inexact, but that's a different issue.)

    That comfortable picture was burst by quantum mechanics. Here for the first time physicists first developed the mathematical models and then tried to imagine what kind of physical model they might represent.

    As I see it, that's a popular yet flawed depiction of the story of science. In practice, of course, actually doing science involves a lot of back and forth between theory and evidence, but the divorce between models and reality goes back to the beginning of the scientific revolution, when Scholastic philosophy was largely tossed aside. The problem is that the new "simplified" approach to the philosophy of science never really worked from the start; it's just that only with QM did people finally give up pretending that it did. It wasn't a very plausible system even in Newton's day, but as long as you could draw pictures, people went along with it. QM just pushed this facade beyond the breaking point, at which point people start coming up with even wackier substitute philosophies. Meanwhile, the perennial philosophy (held by Prof. Feser and most of the regulars here) accommodates modern physics quite handily. It's not only a theistic set of mind, but one that handles science in about the most natural way possible (pun intended).

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  158. You wrote:

    >You seem to be missing the point... I'm not asking about things that are a moral [framework]... I'm asking for a thing that is either good and immoral, or evil and moral.

    But in the earlier post you wrote:

    >>The terms rather clearly imply a moral framework... Or can you name an act that is good but immoral, evil but moral?

    You need to look up the either/or fallacy & or the Fallacy of the false alternative.

    Because your question is not coherent or logical plus you keep contradicting yourself. Do make up your mind? You are not discussing moral goodness then you are then you claim there is only moral vs immoral with no amorality. Tis silly. Make up your mind.

    >If I describe a day as "good" I'm not making a moral judgement on that day... I'm just stating my subjective view on the quality of that day.

    You still have to provide an ontological definition of Good. I can do so from the perspective of Aristotle. The Good is that which everything desires. The Good can also be classified as the virtuous, useful and desirable.

    The day is thus good because it contains properties that are useful and or desirable.

    >So if the Queen made murder a crime, then murdered someone she could not be arrested for it?

    A human Queen is always under the moral law and thus may not licitly allow murder. (Clearly unequivocal comparisons vs Analogous are beyond your comprehension. You need to consult a philosophy dictionary.)

    One can only analogously compare her & God in so far as both are Law Givers who are above their own laws. She may licitly be above paying taxes. She is subject to the moral law and a moral agent. God is not a moral agent and God is not subject to the moral law since that would be incoherent.

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  159. >And? Can a deity order its creations/worshipers to slaughter its creations/non-worshipers and still be considered a "good" deity?

    A meaningless question since you equivocate between different concepts of God at the drop of a hat. It's illogical.

    Plus do you believe if there is any type of Creator God that He would have rights over His creations in the area of life vs death? If not then why not? Do I have a right to terminate a Computer program I wrote? Does God not have the right to end a person's biological functions and release their soul from it's body? If not then why not?

    Of course since God from the Classic perspective cannot coherently be conceived of as a Moral agent the question is moot. It's like asking can Evolution cause creatures to evolve to eat other creatures? Of course! But does that make it morally wrong for Evolution to do so since Evolution is not a moral agent and can't coherently be conceived as such? It's obvious.

    >This raises a rather interesting question... is it logical for a rule maker to make rules to which they are not subject to?

    Yes it an interesting question except it can't coherently be asked of God. Rules are for harmony within a shared community. A human ruler is part of the Human community. God in the Classical sense does not share any sort of community with us. Only a Theistic Personalist God can share a community with us & of course every serious Thomist here is a strong Atheist in regards to the existence of such a false god.
    So it is still a non starter.

    >I'm not seeing how your white-washing interpretation of the OT matters when what is written in the OT is exceptionally clear on these points.

    The idea the Bible is "exceptionally clear" was invented in the 16th century by Martin Luther. It is called the doctrine of the Perspicuity of Scripture. We are Catholics here thus it's a non-starter. We reject perspicuity like we reject private interpretation, Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura..etc. Accept it.

    Sorry but this is a dead end for you. To have this argument you must put on the hat of an Evangelical Protestant Apologist and try to make the case for Perspecuity, Private Interpretation and Sola Scripture then turn around and launch your Atheist polemic against the Bible understood in these terms. Except your Atheist polemic against the Bible understood in these terms is near identical to the one we Catholics use in the first place and have been using against the Prots for over 500 years.

    Your one size fits all polemic still an epic fail. Try the fundies they are more your speed.

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  160. @Tops

    >You know for people who claim that not only is there an objectively good moral code out there, but that their moral code corresponds to that moral code there seems to be a great deal of difficulty answering a simple yes or no question.

    The questions you ask don't have a simple yes or no answer. Plus they are mostly BS. "Do you still beat your wife?" is often framed as a simple yes or no question. But it's sophistry worthy of cheap politicians and unworthy of any philosopher or rational human being.

    >Maybe an easier question is in order... Genghis Khan comes to a city somewhere in central Asia... he orders his troops to kill every adult male and married woman, but to take the younger males as slaves (and the women as sex slaves).

    >Is Genghis Khan's order moral or immoral? Are the warriors who follow his commands acting morally or immoral?

    Obviously it's immoral by Christian standards to take sex slaves & to kill non-combatants.

    But why don't you cut out the Gnu'toid bullshit? We all know you are trying to make a equivalence between Genghis Khan vs God ordering Herem against the Midianites(Number 31) to kill the Adult Males and Married Women but keep the Virgin girls alive for the Israel.

    The Problem with your little argument by equivalency is many. 1) The Virgin Midian girls can't be sex slaves since Fornication is forbidden by the Torah & the Oral Law so an Israelite man could only have sex with them if they married them. 2) The Torah and the Oral Law forbid Jews fornicating with Gentile women under pain of summery execution by Zealots(the later according to Rabbinic Tradition). 3) They can't be forced to marry anybody against their will since the Oral Law & the Rabbinic Tradition says "A Women is acquired in marriage with her consent and not without it". 4) They also have to convert to Judaism as well since marriage to a Gentile woman is invalid.

    Plus we don't know the cut off age for the unmarried male offspring being put to death so there is no reason to believe they killed infants.

    Sorry there is no reason to read the narrative in a fundamentalist literalistic manner without the Oral Law and Tradition. Nor do we rely on scripture alone.

    I have explained all this to you in the past I believe. It's still a Catholic Blog.

    Get over it.

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  161. All who, without commission from God, dare to execute private revenge, and who, from ambition, covetousness, or resentment, wage war and desolate kingdoms, must one day answer for it. But if God, instead of sending an earthquake, a pestilence, or a famine, be pleased to authorize and command any people to avenge His cause, such a commission surely is just and right. The Israelites could show such a commission, though no persons now can do so. Their wars were begun and carried on expressly by Divine direction, and they were enabled to conquer by miracles. Unless it can be proved that the wicked Canaanites did not deserve their doom, objectors only prove their dislike to God, and their love to his enemies. Man makes light of the evil of sin, but God abhors it. This explains the terrible executions of the nations which had filled the measure of their sins.

    -Matthew Henry Commentary on Numbers

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  162. StoneTop said... there seems to be a great deal of difficulty answering a simple yes or no question.

    Alas, "simplicity" is subjective (look it up!). Your thinking a question can be answered simply "yes" or "no" does not make it so. Even if semantically it could, that does not mean it would be productive. You have shown yourself ignorant of many issues which you are trying to discuss. The ignorance is defensible -- we all have to start somewhere -- but the way you seem to resist curing your ignorance is not. You seem bizarrely unwilling to find out what it is you are talking about, and then have the gall to complain that you don't get the responses you want.

    Is Genghis Khan's order moral or immoral? Are the warriors who follow his commands acting morally

    You're changing the subject again. Probably because you're so fuzzy on the foundations. That aside, your questions are not "simple", they are ambiguous. No doubt you know what you mean (ok, there is plenty of doubt, actually), but the context simply does not indicate, eg. whether you meant to ask whether Khan is culpable in issuing such an order, or whether the action is consonant with human nature. Similarly, you have failed to provide information about the warriors' mental states, if the question was intended to be about their moral responsibilities -- and if it was, then you have also ignored that their actions consist of multiple moral strands (with regard to the end result of the action vs. duties in carrying out properly issued commands, etc.).

    it is your deity that determines the morality of a given act.

    "It" is? What's "it"? Two things were mentioned. Of course, the reference to "your deity" suggests that you have not understood either one.

    Right... they are arguing over their model of objective reality fitting with objective reality.

    Let's recap: I said "they're arguing about things not ideas" and you said "Right, they're arguing about models not things". Ok, please add "right" to your dictionary list. But that isn't even the point: scientists disagree but the universe is objective nonetheless. Similarly, people disagree about morals but morality is still objective. If you think otherwise, you need to find a real reason.

    your particular deity of choice represents only one possible "Ultimate Being" out of the many possible "Ultimate Beings".

    Um, no. Once again, that indicates that you don't comprehend the concepts. People may disagree about the nature of the Ultimate Being, but that does not entail multiple "ultimate" beings. If you don't understand the difference between the Ultimate Being and (possible) attributes of that Being, you will not understand anything that follows.

    "A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject."
    Does that definitions suffice?


    It's not unreasonable for a definition of "objectively true", referring to propositions. It gets at the key notion of "mind-independence", although loosely (counter-examples to the way it's phrased are obvious). It suffices to show, say, that change is no problem for objectivity (Is there change independent of your mind? Of course), or that cultural variation is a different matter (Does your opinion of something depend on your mind? Of course.)

    Is slavery moral or immoral independent of the beliefs of the people involved?

    Of course it is.

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  163. But in the earlier post you wrote:

    there is an extra space in there... it should be amoral not "a moral"

    I'm still waiting for an example of an immoral good act, or an evil moral act.

    You are not discussing moral goodness then you are then you claim there is only moral vs immoral with no amorality

    I was unaware that English wasn't your first language. In the English language when one talks of good and evil one is speaking of moral perceptions of an act. For example if you found a particular person to be honest you might describe them as a good person, while a constant liar may be described as evil (or at least immoral). This differs from when the term good is used in amoral situations... as you might describe an apple pie you enjoyed as a "good apple pie" but you wouldn't describe an apple pie you disliked as an "evil apple pie"

    You still have to provide an ontological definition of Good. I can do so from the perspective of Aristotle. The Good is that which everything desires. The Good can also be classified as the virtuous, useful and desirable.

    Except that "good" is very subjective... because there is nothing out there that everything "desires". I prefer Rieslings that are on the dry side, and as such I'd describe a rather dry Riesling as "good"... you may prefer sweet Rieslings (or not care for Rieslings at all).

    Virtuous is similarly subjective... as there are those who find the actions of the 9/11 hijackers to be virtuous, while there are others (myself included) who do not see any virtue in that act.

    Useful is subjective as well... as what is useful to one person isn't useful to another (or even useful to a person in all circumstances... a parachute isn't useful if one is taking a shower, and a bar of soap isn't very useful if you fall out of an airplane.

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  164. >I'm still waiting for an example of an immoral good act, or an evil moral act.

    Your question is still an argumentative fallacy as I have twice explained and you are determined to ignore it at all costs.

    Your belief things are either moral or immoral sans amorality is silly.

    Plus you can't seem to make up your mind if you are talking about Moral goodness specifically or goodness in general.

    Now you have gone into full troll mode.

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  165. A human Queen is always under the moral law and thus may not licitly allow murder.

    Sure... but that moral law is based on culture. If the Queen lived in the culture where it was customary for the queen to hunt down and kill one of her subjects a month as part of a ritual to placate the chief deity of that kingdom then the people in the kingdom would see her act as a moral one (and would not likely call it murder, though I would disagree).

    She may licitly be above paying taxes.

    How so? The Queen of England does pay taxes. Wouldn't it be inconsistent for her to declare herself to be exempt from the very rules she makes?

    God is not a moral agent and God is not subject to the moral law since that would be incoherent.

    Actually it is incoherent for an entity to pass rules that it does not have to follow... Indeed that is quite often referred to as hypocritical.

    Lets say that I was a Duke, and I ruled over a valley. You come into my valley and buy some land, then I pass a rule saying that what a person grows on his land is his property... and that anyone who takes crops from another persons land is a thief. A few weeks later you find me out in your apple orchard having picked your entire apple crop. Am I a thief?

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  166. A meaningless question since you equivocate between different concepts of God at the drop of a hat. It's illogical.

    How is my definition of a deity changing?

    Plus do you believe if there is any type of Creator God that He would have rights over His creations in the area of life vs death?

    No, he may have the power to do so... and the desire to do so... but not the "right" to do so.

    But does that make it morally wrong for Evolution to do so since Evolution is not a moral agent and can't coherently be conceived as such?

    Correct, Evolution is amoral... and as such people don't look to the Theory of Evolution to give them morals (it describes what may happen, not necessarily what we want to happen).

    Yes it an interesting question except it can't coherently be asked of God. Rules are for harmony within a shared community. A human ruler is part of the Human community.

    Right... and by that same token morals are relative to the community itself.

    We are Catholics here thus it's a non-starter. We reject perspicuity like we reject private interpretation, Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura..etc. Accept it

    Oh I'm well familiar with your brand of "follow the parts of the Bible I agree with, ignore the parts that I don't agree with".

    Obviously it's immoral by Christian standards to take sex slaves & to kill non-combatants.

    So when the Bible describes people doing so they are acting immorally, even though the Bible says that your deity commanded them to do so?

    We all know you are trying to make a equivalence between Genghis Khan vs God ordering Herem against the Midianites(Number 31) to kill the Adult Males and Married Women but keep the Virgin girls alive for the Israel.

    I thought you said that it was unChristian to kill non-combatants? Or is genocide OK when your deity doesn't like the culture?

    3) They can't be forced to marry anybody against their will since the Oral Law & the Rabbinic Tradition says "A Women is acquired in marriage with her consent and not without it".

    So if you murder a woman's family... carry her off to your country, and then ask her to marry you she can be said to be consenting if she agrees?

    4) They also have to convert to Judaism as well since marriage to a Gentile woman is invalid.

    Same as above... could their conversions be said to be true conversions... and not just out of terror?

    Plus we don't know the cut off age for the unmarried male offspring being put to death so there is no reason to believe they killed infants.

    So "kill everyone but unmarried females" means "leave all infants alive"?

    Sorry there is no reason to read the narrative in a fundamentalist literalistic manner without the Oral Law and Tradition. Nor do we rely on scripture alone.

    Indeed, we can look to other historical sources for a glimpse into the Semitic cultures of the Iron Age Levant... where slaughtering all the males /married females, the carrying off the virgins to be "wives" wasn't that uncommon as part of warfare.

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  167. @Tops
    >How so? The Queen of England does pay taxes.

    Changing the subject alert. The point is the Queen doesn't have to pay taxes. She is under no civil obligation to do so. Plus I was clearly talking about a classic Absolute Monarchy not a modern Constitutional one. Which is more like God's rule analogously? Wow are you really that thick? You didn't get that?

    >How is my definition of a deity changing?

    A better question is since when do you have one? The last time we spoke you equated the dualistic God of the Zoroastrians, Pantheistic Brahman, the Prime Mover of Aristotle with your latent Fundamentalist Theistic personalist concepts.
    I have never seen a wannabe fake it so hard in my life.

    >Actually it is incoherent for an entity to pass rules that it does not have to follow... Indeed that is quite often referred to as hypocritical.

    How can a Classic Thomistic view of God be coherently classified as an "entity"?
    Since when? Here is yet another example of you equivocating god concepts.

    >Lets say that I was a Duke, and I ruled over a valley.

    As is you tendency to equivocate between Analogous comparisons with Unequivocal comparisons.

    >No, he may have the power to do so... and the desire to do so... but not the "right" to do so.

    Well that is your first honest answer but unfortunately it is merely a subjective claim on your part (by your own standards) & thus has no meaning. How anybody has a "right" to do or do not is naturally something you can't articulate.

    I won't hold my breath.

    >Correct, Evolution is amoral... and as such people don't look to the Theory of Evolution to give them morals (it describes what may happen, not necessarily what we want to happen).

    What about scientists and philosophers(not too few are Atheists) who believe morality evolved? That would at least show something Amoral can produce morality.

    >Right... and by that same token morals are relative to the community itself.

    Which begs the question since how does a Classic Theistic God share a community with us and can be judged by you to be immoral to cause the death of His creatures whom he created? He doesn't can't coherently be described as such.

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  168. >Oh I'm well familiar with your brand of "follow the parts of the Bible I agree with, ignore the parts that I don't agree with".

    As I am aware of your "NO FAIR! You are not a fundamentalist?" brand of Atheism. Get over it.

    >So when the Bible describes people doing so they are acting immorally, even though the Bible says that your deity commanded them to do so?

    ??????????????????????????? English please?

    >I thought you said that it was unChristian to kill non-combatants?

    It's unchristian to take the life of even an evil doer without God's authorization. (Self-defense is merely using sufficient force to protect your life which unfortunately ends in the death of the unjust attacker).

    >Or is genocide OK when your deity doesn't like the culture?

    It is not genocide(i.e. Mass Murder) since God has the right to give and take life as He see fit. Thus he can coherently murder anymore than an Absolute Monarch can be guilty of not paying taxes to Himself. It doesn't matter if God ends life directly or threw authorized agents. It can't be murder.

    >So if you murder a woman's family... carry her off to your country, and then ask her to marry you she can be said to be consenting if she agrees?

    Calling the extermination of the Midianites "murder" begs the question since you have no objective moral standard by your own admission. It's all cultural and subjective.
    Besides she can refuse if she converts to Judaism and if she doesn't convert but stays a Ger Tov(a protected Noachide gentile alien) she is still not eligible to marry an Israelite. Judaism forbids marriage to non-Jews.

    >Same as above... could their conversions be said to be true conversions... and not just out of terror?

    They don't have to convert if they don't want too but only follow the 7 laws of Noah which even an Atheist could follow since they are all negative laws and don't require you profess anything. Some can choose in lew of conversion to accept more negative laws found in the Torah and obtain more rights. Conversion is not mandated.

    >So "kill everyone but unmarried females" means "leave all infants alive"?

    Yes. The Bible says "all have sinned" but logically that can't be hyper literal. Did Jesus sin? Or God? Or the Virgin Mary? I think not. Your fundie hyper-literalism is so cute. An Atheist Protestant! That sillyness will never get old in the laugh out loud department.

    >Indeed, we can look to other historical sources for a glimpse into the Semitic cultures of the Iron Age Levant... where slaughtering all the males /married females, the carrying off the virgins to be "wives" wasn't that uncommon as part of warfare.

    They where also all polytheists but the Israelite monotheists where the exception that proved the rule.

    So I fail to see the equivalence.

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  169. @Tops

    >Except that "good" is very subjective... because there is nothing out there that everything "desires".

    The "good" is what everything desires. I never said everything has the same type of good as it's desire(i.e. goal).

    Anon is right. You don't know shit and you don't seem to want to learn.

    >I prefer Rieslings that are on the dry side, and as such I'd describe a rather dry Riesling as "good"... you may prefer sweet Rieslings (or not care for Rieslings at all).

    You prefer the "good" taste of food and your personal taste is different but so what? Are there people who prefer "bad" tasting food in Luwe of good?

    >Virtuous is similarly subjective... as there are those who find the actions of the 9/11 hijackers to be virtuous, while there are others (myself included) who do not see any virtue in that act.

    No virture is objective. Who has the correct set of true virtues and why is the question.

    >Useful is subjective as well... as what is useful to one person isn't useful to another (or even useful to a person in all circumstances... a parachute isn't useful if one is taking a shower, and a bar of soap isn't very useful if you fall out of an airplane.

    These are all non-starters since I never said all things desire the same "goods". At this point you will say something asinine like "How can a rock desire anything".

    Anon is right. You are an ignorant person who refuses to learn. dguller is an Atheist & is making a true effort to learn all this (not agree, but learn)and you are not in his league by a long shot. You are not even trying.

    I pity you.

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  170. Plus I was clearly talking about a classic Absolute Monarchy not a modern Constitutional one. Which is more like God's rule analogously?

    Isn't Absolute Monarchy just rule by force... a "do what I say or I will kill you" kind of deal? Besides the point still stands... Is it coherent for a rule-maker to make a rule but then not follow it? Can one really say "don't steal" and then go a thieving, and not be seen as hypocritical?

    The last time we spoke you equated the dualistic God of the Zoroastrians, Pantheistic Brahman, the Prime Mover of Aristotle with your latent Fundamentalist Theistic personalist concepts

    From someone who believes that their deity is three but still one I'm not sure why you have a problem with two but still one... or ten thousand but still one.

    How anybody has a "right" to do or do not is naturally something you can't articulate.

    Sure I can... rights arise just like any other aspect of our legal code, from the culture in which they originate.

    What about scientists and philosophers(not too few are Atheists) who believe morality evolved? That would at least show something Amoral can produce morality.

    A morality that is still relative to the society in which it evolved. Evolution only favors the morality that is most beneficial to a given culture at a given point in time, the exact contents of that code are irrelevant.

    Which begs the question since how does a Classic Theistic God share a community with us and can be judged by you to be immoral to cause the death of His creatures whom he created? He doesn't can't coherently be described as such.

    How can that deity give morals without being part of the community?

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  171. As I am aware of your "NO FAIR! You are not a fundamentalist?" brand of Atheism. Get over it.

    It's not that you are not being "fair" it is that you are being rather inconsistent with regards to your beliefs.

    It's unchristian to take the life of even an evil doer without God's authorization.

    So Genocide is acceptable as long as a deity approves?

    It is not genocide(i.e. Mass Murder) since God has the right to give and take life as He see fit.

    So the 9/11 hijackers were behaving morally according to your beliefs? They killed lots of people because they believed that their monotheistic deity commanded it?

    Calling the extermination of the Midianites "murder" begs the question since you have no objective moral standard by your own admission. It's all cultural and subjective.

    Sure I can... As long as I'm not claiming that my moral code is objective I can say that I find a given action immoral.

    Besides she can refuse if she converts to Judaism and if she doesn't convert but stays a Ger Tov(a protected Noachide gentile alien) she is still not eligible to marry an Israelite.

    I'm questioning if the girl could be truly consenting.. what with the butchering of her parents / brothers, and the dragging off to a foreign land to be a slave, with the only alternative is to marry the person that put her parents / brothers to the sword.

    The Bible says "all have sinned" but logically that can't be hyper literal. Did Jesus sin? Or God? Or the Virgin Mary

    So did the slaughtered infants sin? Assuming that having sinned is sufficient cause for getting slaughtered.

    They where also all polytheists but the Israelite monotheists where the exception that proved the rule.

    So worship the right deity and you get to slaughter everyone else?

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  172. The "good" is what everything desires. I never said everything has the same type of good as it's desire(i.e. goal).

    But not everything desires the same thing... indeed two different beings can desire opposite things (a woman desires not to be raped, her rapist desires to rape her).

    You prefer the "good" taste of food and your personal taste is different but so what? Are there people who prefer "bad" tasting food in Luwe of good?

    Nope... because in the English language "good" is often short hand for "something I find pleasing"... I find canned tuna repugnant, but others don't... so if you gave me a bite then asked if I thought it tasted good or bad I'd say bad, while someone who liked the taste of canned tuna would say that it tasted good. Is the taste of canned tuna objectively good or objectively bad?

    No virture is objective. Who has the correct set of true virtues and why is the question.

    How would one go about proving that they have the 'right' set of virtues?

    These are all non-starters since I never said all things desire the same "goods". At this point you will say something asinine like "How can a rock desire anything".

    Well you do open the door to such questions when you say that "all things desire the same "goods""... as rocks are an element in the set of all things.

    What are these "goods" that "all things" desire?

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  173. I wrote:

    These are all non-starters since I never said all things desire the same "goods". At this point you will say something asinine like "How can a rock desire anything".

    You replied"

    >Well you do open the door to such questions when you say that "all things desire the same "goods""... as rocks are an element in the set of all things.

    I denied saying that and of course anyone who reads my posts before that can see I never said that.

    So you have crossed over into full Troll mode here Tops.

    You aren't even trying to respond intelligently. You are not even reading the posts carefully.

    Anon was right about you QUOTE"Ignorance is defensible -- we all have to start somewhere -- but the way you seem to resist curing your ignorance is not. You seem bizarrely unwilling to find out what it is you are talking about, and then have the gall to complain that you don't get the responses you want."END QUOTE

    At this point you have become another djindra.

    If you applied yourself you could have become a dguller.

    But I guess against willful stupidity even the gods contend in vain.

    You are the face of the New Atheism. I weep for the other Atheists who are not Gnus.

    Weep I say!

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  174. I denied saying that and of course anyone who reads my posts before that can see I never said that.

    Then what did you mean by "The "good" is what everything desires."? If "good" is objective then don't all things desire the same "good"?

    If Tuna Casserole is objectively "good" then that would mean that I was wrong when I said that I found it repulsive.

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  175. F*** off Tops.

    You know what I meant. Feser has host of blog posts explaining Aristotle's definition of good which I clearly cited.

    If you had really read the relevant material on this blog you would have recognized that.

    But you are not reading it. Nor are you asking serious questions.

    So again F*** off.

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  176. Feser has host of blog posts explaining Aristotle's definition of good which I clearly cited.

    Yep, and I'm simply pointing out that that definition is riddled with inconsistencies if you are trying to define an objective good.

    A better definition is that individuals seek what they view as good, based on prior experience.

    But then since every individual has a different set of prior experiences they will also have a different view on what is "good"..

    For example: based on my prior experience I see it as "good" when two men who are in love get married... while others do not share that belief (some even, rather absurdly, view it is "evil")

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  177. Now you are in full John Cleese mode tops.

    So again f*** off.

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  178. Wow Ben... You really need to step back and relax a bit. No need to get so worked up over a discussion in the comments of a blog

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  179. @ StoneTop

    "Sure I can... As long as I'm not claiming that my moral code is objective I can say that I find a given action immoral."

    I don't get why you don't understand how this statement is ridiculous.

    You're saying you can call something "immoral" while simultaneously saying that it's only your subjective opinion. So why should anyone take you seriously, then?

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  180. You're saying you can call something "immoral" while simultaneously saying that it's only your subjective opinion. So why should anyone take you seriously, then?

    Since all moral positions are subjective then, according to you, nobody should take any moral position seriously?

    I could always claim that my moral positions were somehow objectively the correct moral positions... but without evidence to back that up I'd just be making wild claims. So instead I try to provide rational explanations for why I find particular actions moral / immoral.

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  181. On reflection, I believe that I gave Dr Law the benfit of the doubt with regard to his Evil God Challenge - especially in his debate with William Lane Craig.

    However, after some of the incredibly long and conveluted exchanges, as well as re-listening to his debate with Dr Craig, I think many of the criticisms leveled against Dr Law do actually STICK. This is not because he hasn't attempted to deal with them, but he has not managed to persuade those interested in understanding his arguments (like me) in any meaningful way, which is what he needs for his challenge to even get off the ground.

    Dr Law admits that many atheists missundertand the argument, so how can he hope to convince the theist-on-the-street. As I said above:

    "...until Dr Law can come up with a challenge that I can make sense of, it seems to me that I can continue to believe in God without offending my faculties or my faith."

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  182. Do your medieval "demonstrations" that few philosophers find persuasive really carry much weight against my overwhelming empirical evidence that your God does not exist?

    We'd need to examine them and find out. Though, as I say, the verdict of the philosophical community is already in.


    Hoo boy. It's always sad to see a pro philosopher reduced to tactics that would make a sophomore blush. I was willing to give Law a respectful hearing right up until he started saying things like this. I guess no-one is above Appeal to Majority, even a professional philosopher.

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  183. "Evil is not a privation, as any fule kno."


    Wow. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen: Stephen Law, great philosopher.

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  184. @Arthur ""Evil is not a privation, as any fule kno."


    Wow. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen: Stephen Law, great philosopher."

    I think you hav missed the litry refrens behind this comment. Suffice to say that GRIMES and his KANES are Evil but not a privation.


    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Molesworth)

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