Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 3)

[Trailblazer]

It was already clear you didn't have any valid counter arguments.

No, what is clear is that I do not have the time or desire to plow through your long posts where all you do is make accusations of logical fallacies that "you believe" I committed. I cannot refute your position if I do not even know what it is. I asked you to state your position concisely in which I would respond with a counter argument but you never did that.

The fact that you admitted you don't think you are required to obey the laws of logic means you would have never been capable of giving a logically valid defense of your position.

That is a straw man because I never said that I do not obey the laws of logic. I only ever said that I refuse to plow through your long posts where all you do is make accusations of logical fallacies that "you believe" I committed.

 

[Koldo]

Logical fallacy, malas fides

You can't claim to know what someone has or has done when you admit to not reading their arguments.
Therefore, cannot claim anything needs to be fixed about that which you never read.

By your malas fides of not arguing in good faith, you are not even trying to have a debate.

I have read the first part and there is already a problem with it which I have pointed out long ago, your definition for death. I am trying to have a debate, but unable considering you have given up since you refuse to fix your definition.

 

[Koldo]

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.
You cannot quote a single fallacy I have pointed out and demonstrate any error with it.
Merely asserting it is in error doesn't make it true just because you assert it is.

And if it is not in error, then the fault is with the one who committed the error.

You have a responsibility to correct your fallacious invalid argument to be valid if you want it to be regarded as true.

No one is entitled to make logically fallacious arguments and demand others accept them as valid truth.

And if you think you can make fallacious arguments without having them called out for being fallacious, then it raises the question:
Why do you feel entitled to use invalid logic and demand others accept it as valid logic?




Your claim is false.
A fallacy fallacy is when you try to claim a conclusion is wrong simply because a fallacy was used in it's logic.

You will not be able to quote anywhere that I have supposedly done any such thing.

Pointing out why a specific argument is fallacious, and therefore why that specific argument is invalid, is not only not the definition of "fallacy fallacy" but it is the very definitional means by which a logical debate takes place - because by definition no logical debate could take place if no one would point out why the logic of the other person was at fault. You would just be throwing opinions at each other never able to come to agreeen



Whether or not you commit fallacies is in your hands.
If you don't want to have to have your fallacious arguments called out for being fallacious then don't make fallacious arguments.

What makes you feel entitled to argue fallaciously and then demand others accept it as valid logic?

That would be like putting forth a nonsense scientific model and demanding your peers accept it as true just because you don't like it when people point out the logical flaws in your reasoning.

If I am not at fault for pointing out why your argument is fallacious, then you are at fault for making a fallacious argument, and the burden is on you to reformulate your argument to become valid.

Your fallacious arguments don't stop being fallacious just because someone stops pointing out why they are fallacious.


In your particular case, you didn't have a significant problem with making fallacious arguments in what I have responded to so far. Which is refreshing. Not everyone has a problem forming logical arguments and understanding logical rebuttals. But those that do usually devolve into doing nothing but arguing with fallacies when they realize they don't have a valid counter argument left because they don't care about what is true.

There is a underlying problem with your behaviour that you might not have noticed.

It is not a problem when you claim that someone is guilty of fallacious reasoning, but when you bombard people with a lot of those claims it becomes tiresome to have a proper conversation. Not because we can't defend ourselves from your accusations but rather because defending ourselves would make our posts even lenghtier than yours. At that point the conversation becomes uninteresting. Many of your points revolve around misconceptions on your part that I wouldn't actually mind explaining if you seemed actually more interested in having a conversation rather than winning an olympic medal.

 

[Koldo]

A few issues with this:

1. Children suffering from conception is a sad condition, and going back to your contention: the reason we find it sad is because God finds it sad.


2. It is a legitimate question to ask why this happens if it makes God sad – but trying to answer that question would be getting ahead of ourselves.

First we have to come to terms with the fact that death and suffering does not have to be designed or intended by God, but is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of the fact that we have free will and God is the only source of life and love.

Trying to answer the question without first coming to terms with that will not yield an understanding of what is going on or why.


3. We have no reason to believe hitler is experiencing more life than a child who dies. Based on what the Bible says and hitler’s history we have every reason to believe he would be in hell, separated from God, suffering beyond our ability to comprehend. We also have Biblical reason to believe the child has been gathered into God’s presence where their pain has ceased and they have more joy than we can comprehend (Matthew 19:13-14, Matthew 18:3, 2 samuel 12:22-23, Matthew 18:10, Luke 18:15-16, Mark 10:15, Isaiah 7:14-16)


4. From a logical standpoint, you are not in a position to make a value judgement about whether or not it violates God’s omnibenevolence.

Firstly because you would need a theistic creator source to appeal to for your objective moral values.

Secondly, because you are not omniscient and lack the capacity for understanding all the possibilities for why something happens and why God does or does not act in a given circumstance.

Logically, it is only necessary that there be one possible reason to explain why something could be congruent with God’s all-good nature for your claim to be false that God is supposedly malevolent for the existence of a particular circumstance.


5. The form of your argument is itself fallacious; because your willingness to accept a conclusion, or how you feel about a conclusion, has no bearing on the truth of that conclusion or the validity/soundness of the logic and premises that were used to reach that conclusion. You don’t refute the logical validity of an argument by deciding you just don’t like the conclusion.



Your analogy is based on the false premise that God is inflicting death on man as a punishment for rebellion, rather than recognizing the possibility that death could be a necessary and unavoidable consequence of free will because God is the only source of life.



Biblically, to be united to God is to share perfectly in His character and nature. Meaning, you act in perfect accordance with God’s nature and character and do not deviate from that (which would be defined as sin). That would mean you would act with perfect love towards God and others.The basis for that is found throughout many of the scriptures I have already given so far.

Calling it a mechanism would be inaccurate because that’s falsely implying it’s some kind of physical law that has been created, rather than a necessary logical aspect of reality independent of a law God creates to govern the universe.

Understanding the exact details of how this works is not necessary for it to be a logically valid answer to the PoE question. You have given no logical reason why it would be necessary to understand all the exact details of how it works in order for it to be accepted as a logically valid answer to the PoE question.


I don’t know what you mean by “vulnerable”. You’d have to define more specifically what you mean by that before I could answer the question.



You are committing the logical fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity by claiming that because you don’t understand it or how it works that must therefore mean it’s not be true.

You cannot claim what I said doesn’t make logical sense unless you can demonstrate actual logical fault with it.



The Bible does not define it as mere belief, as per the Scriptures I have already given. Obedience to God’s will is how it’s defined.

Knowledge won’t do you any good if you make the choice to not obey what you know is true.

The Bible says God has already made it known to man in their inner being that He exists, He created them, and what is right and wrong to do. So that no man will be with excuse on the final day of judgement. They won’t be able to claim ignorance or claim God isn’t just in how He judges them. Romans 1:18-32.

If you don’t want to do what is right, then the only thing more knowledge is likely to do is bring greater condemnation on you for choosing to do what you know is wrong.

One likely reason God is not more overt in forcing this knowledge on people and proving it is because they will be under greater judgement for disobeying the truth if they are given more profound proof they have of it’s truth. Luke 10:10-12. We see also in the Exodus and the early church of Acts where judgement is swift and supernatural in nature, which coincides with the level of high supernatural activity and revelation of God’s truth they are experiencing on a regular basis. You don’t really see that in the Scripture where knowledge of God and proof of His truth is scarce.



I have already demonstrated why your claim is false that we must assume free will and no possibility of death can exist at the same time without contradiction.

Additionally, even if we presumed God did put it there intending for you to experience it, your argument is fallacious because it is based on the false premise that you have any basis for accusing God’s actions of being malevolent.

As I already explained above, without a theistic creator you have no objective morality with which to label something malevolent vs benevolent.
And with a theistic creator, logically they are the only one who can define what is moral by what intent they give to creation.

So no matter which way you try to have it, you end up being completely unable to logically accuse God of being malevolent because either He gives the standard by which right/wrong is judged or you have no standard with which to judge.


Which renders the whole PoE question null from a practical perspective. The question is self refuting if you are dealing with the creator of everything, or deny there is a creator of everything, because in either case you have no moral basis with which to judge whether or not this omni-being is benevolent or not.

The only way the PoE question doesn’t logically fall apart is if you posit an all powerful, all knowing being, who is not himself the creator of everything, but there actually is a creator of everything. Practically speaking, almost nobody believes in such a being. So the question isn’t actually logically relevant.

I have always found the likes of divine command theory to be pretty odd, because in essence it entails that morality is entirely arbitrary. Because it could be the case that God had a different nature and decided to decree that raping children is perfectly moral.

Either way, it still doesn't prevent the PoE from being applicable per se. If we establish that God himself doesn't behave himself in accordance with what he has decreed to be good, then he is not omnibenevolent.

The question then becomes: Has God decreed that it is good to prevent suffering? Has God decreed that it is good to improve the well-being of others?

If not, then we are definetely working under distinct understandings of what it means to be a good person. And your understanding of what omnibenevolence means is entirely different from what the argument proposes.

 

[Meow Mix]

1. You misunderstood the point I was making:
Which is that if I am giving you logical explanations for how the God of the Bible can be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent by referencing Biblical theology, then it would be wrong for you to demand that my answer to the issue must abandon Biblical theological and philosophical premises and align to your non-Biblical presumptions about what you think your idea of “God” can and can’t do.

I was saying that the Problem of Evil as I was presenting it is presented as-is, with the premises as-is. If the glove doesn't fit, you don't have to wear it, basically. The PoE is aimed at the god of the philosophers with very general properties; the question then becomes whether any individual deity has those same properties or not. Even a little deviation from them may be enough to escape the logical problem. (The fallback at that point is discussing the evidential problem).

It is important to point out that when I say that it does not mean I am abandoning the premises of omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence for God as revealed in the Bible.

An example of what you couldn’t do, for instance, is claim we are forced to accept your premise that mankind has no power by their free will to act upon the world in a way that goes against it’s normal or intended physical function. Ie. Presuming a type of materialistic restraint upon mankind which grants man no ability to operate in the universe outside of what his physical body can bump against.

That is a viewpoint that is not consistent with the Bible, or many other religions for that matter, but is a philosophical premise coming out of the philosophy of materialism.

Such a materialistic philosophical presumption is not logically required as part of the “problem of evil” formulation which only puts three stipulations on the character of God and says nothing about what man’s design and capabilities are. To put limits on what you think God can create man to be capable of doing would itself be violating your premise that God is omnipotent.

There are many other instances where you must be careful not to impose your unnecessary philosophical presumptions onto what is otherwise a logically valid answer to the “problem of evil”.

OK, so we'll need to talk about this particular theodicy then. If I were to summarize the theodicy, it would be that "Powerful non-God agencies (in this case, humans', somehow) are responsible for the laws of physics changing to allow for physical suffering." This is a form of a free will theodicy; it's not unlike some theologians' free will theodicy that demons' agency is what's responsible for suffering (Plantinga takes this view for instance).

The question arises: why would God allow humans to have this power? God could just as easily set up the metaphysical laws of the universe such that humans aren't capable of altering physics in this way. After all, God is responsible for physics such that I can't teleport to Mars with the power of my mind, and God is responsible for my limitations as a human not to be able to, say, create my own universe with the power of my mind either.

Arguably, setting up the metaphysics of the universe to work such that humans can introduce physical suffering by altering the physics of the universe (somehow) is like putting a loaded revolver in an infant's crib: that kind of power doesn't belong there. God is still culpable for it even if humans somehow caused the change by granting humans the capacity to make the change.

Is being able to change the laws of physics necessary to fulfill the condition of free agency? No. So we couldn't defend this choice like that.

Now, I suspect your defense of the theodicy might fall along your "God is the source of life" argument, which I will get to below if that is the case.

It seems far more likely to me that the PoE was a post Christian roman invention drawn out of a Biblical worldview which was then attributed to epicurus in order to lend an air of credibility to it.

Fair enough, but regardless of its history, its premises are generally sterile of particular religious views. If we want to view the omni-attributes as particularly Abrahamic, then okay; I don't think it's super relevant. If it applies to Abrahamic deities then it applies, if it doesn't, then it doesn't.

(Snipped a lot to get post to fit, I assure it was read) So the Biblical account of God is actually more good and awesome than you imagined because it’s possible to have both free will and not have emotional pain – it’s your choice.

If free will is possible without emotional suffering, then it makes the Problem worse, not better: why, then, is there emotional suffering?

You say that in Christian eschatology, there will eventually be no more sorrow: what causes this change? Will humans no longer have free will in heaven? Whence comes this guarantee, if humans have this power to fundamentally change the universe so that there is suffering, that there will never be suffering again?

You say that it will not be possible to have things like unrequited love, or broken friendships, and this sort of thing: does this mean humans will always choose perfectly morally correctly in their interactions with one another? Why couldn't they have started out with this sort of moral perfection?

While I think some of the concepts you're trying to convey are non-cognitive, I will wait to get into that until I understand your eschatology further; otherwise I'm forced to respond with a bunch of "if you're saying this, then this is a consequence, if you're saying that, then this is a consequence," etc. I'd rather know exactly what you're saying so I don't have to consider multiple different possibilities for a response as this thread is already getting bloated.

False premise #2: That physical suffering cannot be linked with the necessity of free will.

Your false premise comes out of a similar misunderstanding of the nature of physical pain/death and the nature of God in relation to man.

If physical pain, corruption, and death, are all the result of what happens to the body as a natural consequence of being disconnected from the source of life (God), then it would be logically impossible for there to exist a world in which someone could experience eternal life without physical suffering while also being disconnected from union with God as the only source of life.

What does it mean to be "connected" or "disconnected" from God, what exactly? This is not conveying a meaningful concept to me. It seems like a deepity. For instance if I wear a particularly girly dress rather than a blouse and jeans as usual, I might joke that I'm "connected" to my feminine side, but colloquially I'm just saying that I'm expressing my gender through my clothes. If I say that I'm "connected" to my cat I mean that I feel a kinship with him, an emotional bond of love and trust with him. But you seem to be expressing something different than either of these two contexts. What exactly are you saying?

It would come down to the individual’s choice about whether or not they want to reject relationship and union with God.

This goes back to the eschatology question for instance: how, in the future, do humans perfectly never freely decide to reject this relationship again (or do they)? How was this relationship rejected in the first place (and for instance, did humans have knowledge of exactly what would happen if they rejected it? Because God would be culpable for giving them that or not). Why don't individual humans get to make this choice during their lifetime before suffering? I am sorry, I'm trying not to use some kind of shotgun method on you by throwing out a lot and seeing what sticks, but these all seem like pertinent questions.

Probably the biggest question is still what it means to have a "union" with God such that it literally alters the physics of the universe outside of God's control (you say God literally can't control it because it would entail acting against God's nature, correct)?

I think what I need from you is a step by step process to explain what it means to have this union, what it means to choose to break it, how this translates to changing the physics of the universe. There is just so much that could be wrong with all of this that I need details.

God cannot force someone to be in union with Him without violating their free will to choose.
Therefore, God cannot force someone to make the choice that will prevent them from experiencing death/pain/suffering.

So how does God ensure this doesn't happen again, whatever "this" is, if it happened before? I'm sorry, this is a repeat question. I will try not to do that, but these things keep coming up.

We could argue, indeed, that it would be immoral for God to force someone to stay in relational union with Him – which is then why He doesn’t, because He is perfectly moral by nature and cannot do anything that would go against who He is.

Therefore, there is no basis for accusing God of not being good enough to create a world without physical or emotional suffering because doing so would necessarily require Him to either do something that was not good by forcing people to be in union with Him against their free will, or it would require Him to not give them free will which then it’s questionable if they even exist as conscious beings at all in that case because they’d just be robots no different than the physical laws God set up to govern the movement of the planets.

It seems logically possible for God to allow people not to be "in union" with Him (whatever that means) while exerting his omnipotence to prevent the universe's physics from changing in a way that allows for physical suffering.

If we're saying that the physics of the universe are outside of God's hands, then we're saying God is not the philosopher's definition of omnipotent (which is to actualize any logically possible state of affairs). There doesn't seem to be a logical contradiction with God simply keeping the physics of the universe the way they were before the Fall or whatever.

You will first have to explain what you mean by this "God is the source of life" business (it sounds noncognitive, but we will see); but if God literally can't control physics, then God is not what's generally understood to be omnipotent, and so the PoE would not apply.

It seems perfectly possible for a person not to want a relationship with God (in the usual sense that we mean the word: so this would be a theist that believes God exists, but doesn't want to talk to God or interact with God's personality) yet still live in a universe where the physics doesn't give their children leukemia.

 

[Meow Mix]

1. Your claim is already refuted on the basis that free will is itself an example of God gifting to man the ability to do something which is unconstrained by any laws which God created to govern the operation of the universe.
Free will by definition cannot be free will unless it’s able to operate under the direction of the individual's will exclusively and not subject to any law which God created to put other things under subjugation to His will.

That depends on what exactly you mean by this. Our free will is constrained by many things. I can't walk on the ceiling, I can't inflict novel forms of torture on people like turning them inside out with my mind, I can't will myself to be a horse instead of a human, I can't bring my TV remote to life with a consciousness of its own, etc.

Were God to set up the physics of the universe in such a way that physical suffering were not possible, humans would still have free agency. The inability to do some things doesn't equate to the absence of agency.

2. Therefore, it is false to claim that things can’t happen without God intending them to. It is presuming a false standard of materialistic determinism which assumes that nothing and no one can violate or alter the laws that were established at the start of the universe.

But this is the case. You claim that humans, through their actions, can alter the physics of the univserse; but to be able to do that, some higher metaphysical thing allows humans to do that. If humans have this power, then it is a property that they possess: and who controls what properties humans possess?

I have the ability to manipulate a mouse with my hand because of the way I'm (ostensibly, in the context of theism) created. If I have the power to change physics, it is also because of the way I'm created. This is rehashing some stuff I said in my last post, but God can create humans with whatever properties God wants: including the inability to change the physics of the universe to allow for suffering (and still allow for free agency).

3. There is no logical requirement as part of the PoE formulation that says there are any limitations that must be imposed on what mankind can or cannot do. You don’t know what abilities or gifts God could have given to man to operate independently of God’s laws that go beyond just free will. You can’t force people to take on your materialistic presumptions because the PoE as it’s formulated doesn’t require you to.

Skipping, you know what my response to this will be (such as from the response directly above, and from the previous post). If God gives humans the ability to instantiate suffering in the universe, then God is culpable for granting the ability to do so. I'm as guilty for dropping a loaded gun in a night club as a potential shooter is for using it.

4. You falsely assume that physical suffering must be a punishment from God for sin. I have given you an alternative possibility for why physical suffering could exist without God actively sending it as a punishment.

Granted, and waiting on clarification for that theodicy.

5. You falsely assume that physical suffering doesn't have to be a part of reality as a consequence of free will. But I gave you an alternative possibility which shows why it would be logically impossible and contradictory for that to happen because God is the source of life and if you are given the freedom to reject the source of life then death is the unavoidable logical and necessary consequence of that.

Waiting on clarification of this "source of life" argument. As of now it's apparently non-cognitive.

Your misperception comes out of not understanding what I was arguing for.

Because if what I argued for were to be abandoning omnipotence then you would also be guilty of abandoning the premise of omnipotence by claiming God can’t create a world in which emotional suffering is not a possibility.

I am picking my battles for right now, but I do doubt the claim that humans could infinitely make correct moral emotional choices unless who they are is fundamentally changed. But if who they are is fundamentally changed, it just raises the question "why not have made them that way from the start?" It makes the Problem worse.

Because what I am putting forth as an answer to the PoE question is using the same premises as limitations that you are. Which are:
1. That God can’t create or perform a logical contradiction.
2. That God desires to give mankind free will and therefore cannot violate that goal.
3. That God giving us free will is a good thing and therefore doesn’t violate his omnibenevolence.

There are malevolent ways to grant free will, in response to (3), which was my point. For instance, if I'm a very fancy schmancy programmer with some very advanced computers, and I'm creating my own Matrix-style world inhabited by actual thinking, feeling, sapient AI's, I have some choices about how to construct their universe.

I can make it so that their choices don't lead to physical suffering (but they are still choices), or I can make it so it's possible for them to make choices that can hurt themselves, or, worse, hurt other people through their actions. If the first one is possible to create, yet I choose the second, that is evidence that I'm not omnibenevolent.

But the interesting thing is that you don’t even have a logical basis for making those presumptions without the Bible as your worldview. You just take for granted they are legitimate limitations on the PoE.

Let’s examine why:

1. The issue of logical contradiction.
Why do you lay claim to the idea that God is not powerful enough to create a world where free will exists but he can’t use his power to prevent emotional pain from happening?

The answer is because it’s a logical contradiction. And you assume that God cannot logically contradict Himself.

But why do you assume God can’t logically contradict Himself? Why do you assume he has to be bound by the laws of logic? How do you know they aren’t just laws he created that can be violated at will if he chooses? If he were truly all powerful couldn’t he do that which is even logically impossible? By definition you’d have to conclude that, otherwise you’re just putting limits on his power and therefore he’s no longer all powerful.

No, most philosophers already reject this notion (that omnipotence is power "without limits"). The reason is because God is as subject to logic as the rest of us; saying otherwise would be to put the cart before the horse. In order for God to be God, He must exemplify logical identity (God = God, A = A), and God can't "make" this fact be true without already being God in the first place. This can all be framed in terms of the aseity-sovereignty paradox whereby we have these two intuitions that God both exists a se and with perfect sovereignty over all things: it's actually a paradox without limits.

All we have to do to trigger the paradox is ask if God could have chosen to have a different set of properties. The answer obviously can't be "yes," because in order to choose His own properties, God would already have to have properties related to making choices, such as the knowledge of what choices are available and the power to actualize them. Thus saying that God is the foundation of logic puts the cart before the horse: God is relevantly dependent on logic, not the other way around. The very fact that God has properties at all means that logic is transcendental to, not relevantly dependent on, God.

In any case, if omnipotence doesn't have logical limits, then the word itself is non-cognitive and meaningless: nothing is being expressed if it's supposed to be some a-logical property (these last two words in combination are also cognitively empty, equally meaningless).

Only with a Biblical worldview do we have a reason for believing your premise is true that God can’t contradict himself.
As I pointed out earlier, the Bible tells us God cannot lie and does not change. The reason he cannot lie is because He cannot do anything which is inconsistent with who He is, and He cannot change who He is, therefore he never has lied and never can lie. God is Truth. His nature is what defines what truth is and all that is not in alignment with God is a lie. (John 17:17, Psalm 119:160, Proverbs 30:5, Isaiah 65:16, Psalm 119:151, John 3:33, John 8:26, John 17:3, John 14:6)

Therefore, that is why we can conclude from a Biblical standpoint why is impossible for God to create a contradiction. It would be a form of lying. It would violate and contradict who He is, His very nature as Truth. By definition truth is objective and singular.

It's possible, and in my opinion more straightforward, to just understand that omnipotent beings still have logical limits by the incorrigible and transcendental nature of logic. It doesn't require referring to dubious texts passed down by cultural diffusion.

2. The issue of free will being a good thing. You take for granted it is, but upon what basis do you presume to claim it is morally good? Without a theistic creator you logically have no possibility for an objective standard to make value judgements about anything being good or bad. All your have is your subjective opinion, with no way to tell someone who differs from you why your opinion of morality is right and why theirs is wrong.

Without the ability to claim that free will is a morally right thing, and therefore a necessary thing, you have no logical basis for not simply accusing God of failing to be omnibenevolent by refusing to constrain people’s choices so that they can never cause emotional pain to others.

You have no reason to believe your premises are true on purely logical grounds. You just take for granted that they are.

First, I have not suggested that God should constrain choices so that they can never cause emotional pain to others (in fact, I said the exact opposite; that God is not culpable for people feeling emotional pain because I suggested it's probably necessary for free will to exist, whereas physical suffering is not).

Second, I also doubt that a god exists at all: obviously, I'm using the framework of theism and moral realism to make an argument; which is the basis of reductio ad absurdum: entertaining premises to show a contradiction or absurdity is entailed.

Third, even outside of the premises, I can present moral arguments: they just depend on if the listener shares the same values. Given common values, moral arguments can still be made because moral arguments can come in the form of hypothetical imperatives: if I value X, then I should do Y (that sort of thing). If a person doesn't share the same values, then obviously yes, they could reject the argument: but I'm usually making arguments based on very common values like altruism and empathy. If someone doesn't value those I wouldn't want to talk to them anyway; but indeed, theoretically they could reject the arguments.

Nothing I have argued requires concluding God lacks omnipotence.
As I have outlined already: your false conclusion comes out of misunderstanding of what I have argued the Bible says about the nature of God, creation, man, sin, life, death, and free will.

We will see, I've gotten that feeling again and said so, somewhere above (this conversation is getting a little bloated; eventually we may have to re-organize each of our arguments into a small list of points).

I have snipped the rest because it would rehash stuff that we're already talking about somewhere above.

 

[Meow Mix]

A few issues with this:

1. Children suffering from conception is a sad condition, and going back to your contention: the reason we find it sad is because God finds it sad.
2. It is a legitimate question to ask why this happens if it makes God sad – but trying to answer that question would be getting ahead of ourselves.

First we have to come to terms with the fact that death and suffering does not have to be designed or intended by God, but is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of the fact that we have free will and God is the only source of life and love.

Trying to answer the question without first coming to terms with that will not yield an understanding of what is going on or why.

As stated in other recent responses, I'll wait to hear more about this theodicy before responding. I believe we should be able to condense discussions a little bit once some things are clarified and expounded on.

3. We have no reason to believe hitler is experiencing more life than a child who dies. Based on what the Bible says and hitler’s history we have every reason to believe he would be in hell, separated from God, suffering beyond our ability to comprehend. We also have Biblical reason to believe the child has been gathered into God’s presence where their pain has ceased and they have more joy than we can comprehend (Matthew 19:13-14, Matthew 18:3, 2 samuel 12:22-23, Matthew 18:10, Luke 18:15-16, Mark 10:15, Isaiah 7:14-16)

This will also depend on the other theodicy (about whether the suffering of the child could have been prevented in the first place). It still signals non-omnibenevolence to offer reward after pain if the pain was unnecessary in the first place. So, we will see when we discuss that. (Re: the "God is the source of life" theodicy).

4. From a logical standpoint, you are not in a position to make a value judgement about whether or not it violates God’s omnibenevolence.

Firstly because you would need a theistic creator source to appeal to for your objective moral values.

This was responded to above, I think in the 2nd post.

Secondly, because you are not omniscient and lack the capacity for understanding all the possibilities for why something happens and why God does or does not act in a given circumstance.

Logically, it is only necessary that there be one possible reason to explain why something could be congruent with God’s all-good nature for your claim to be false that God is supposedly malevolent for the existence of a particular circumstance.

All three PoE posts have been about this exact special pleading theodicy. We would need to have justification for a reason existing to posit this, otherwise we fall into an epistemic trap from which we can never escape (see the first "Problem of Evil and Special Pleading" post).

5. The form of your argument is itself fallacious; because your willingness to accept a conclusion, or how you feel about a conclusion, has no bearing on the truth of that conclusion or the validity/soundness of the logic and premises that were used to reach that conclusion. You don’t refute the logical validity of an argument by deciding you just don’t like the conclusion.

I'm not sure where you think this has happened. Be more specific where you think I've ccome to a conclusion based on what I like or not. I have framed the argument in terms of the incongruence of omnibenevolence with suffering, and stated multiple times (granted, not directly in our discussion) that the argument makes no judgment on whether suffering is "bad," just that it's incongruent with omnibenevolence.

Your analogy is based on the false premise that God is inflicting death on man as a punishment for rebellion, rather than recognizing the possibility that death could be a necessary and unavoidable consequence of free will because God is the only source of life.

I hadn't been sure if you were saying it was a punishment or not. Pretty sure there are "ifs" in front of such statements: "if suffering is a punishment, then..."

I generally couch my terms well. If I don't, it's likely a mistake of omission, not a mistake of assumption.

Biblically, to be united to God is to share perfectly in His character and nature. Meaning, you act in perfect accordance with God’s nature and character and do not deviate from that (which would be defined as sin). That would mean you would act with perfect love towards God and others.The basis for that is found throughout many of the scriptures I have already given so far.

Oh yikes, okay, so, I didn't realize you had already said this here when I was responding above and requesting clarification for this. However, I still have more questions about this, so I think it works out.

How can a finite being share perfectly in God's character and nature, for all time without error? If that's possible, why hasn't it been that way from the start? If it's not possible, how is the conception of heaven coherent unless free will is taken away or humankind's nature fundamentally changed (and if that's possible, why not have just started with that fundamental change)?

How does not acting in accordance with God's nature and character literally, directly change the laws of physics: how does this process work? Why did God give us such an irresponsible power? Why can't God override this and still directly control the physics of the universe? (This is where I was saying it sounds like omnipotence, again, might be out of the picture if God can't do this).

Calling it a mechanism would be inaccurate because that’s falsely implying it’s some kind of physical law that has been created, rather than a necessary logical aspect of reality independent of a law God creates to govern the universe.

It does not imply ontological materialism. For instance if I want to understand something about waves (not physical waves, just pure math here), I have to understand the mechanism by which they interact in pure mathematics: no materialism there. If I perform belief revision and synthesize new understanding of a philosophical context I'm utilizing epistemological mechanisms that I can identify, again, no materialism there. Mechanism does not imply material ontology.

To say that humans magic the physics of the universe into some other state, that's not a really cognitive concept unless you can explain some mechanism for that, why God allows it, why God granted the ability in the first place, etc., otherwise you will still deal with the Problem.

Understanding the exact details of how this works is not necessary for it to be a logically valid answer to the PoE question. You have given no logical reason why it would be necessary to understand all the exact details of how it works in order for it to be accepted as a logically valid answer to the PoE question.

You have to make the concept cognitive, otherwise you're just saying "humans did an unknowable thing in an unknowable way," and might as well have said the slithey toves were gyring and gimbling in the wabe.

The Bible does not define it as mere belief, as per the Scriptures I have already given. Obedience to God’s will is how it’s defined.

Knowledge won’t do you any good if you make the choice to not obey what you know is true.

The Bible says God has already made it known to man in their inner being that He exists, He created them, and what is right and wrong to do. So that no man will be with excuse on the final day of judgement. They won’t be able to claim ignorance or claim God isn’t just in how He judges them. Romans 1:18-32.

If you don’t want to do what is right, then the only thing more knowledge is likely to do is bring greater condemnation on you for choosing to do what you know is wrong.

In your worldview, do you assume that I "know" that God exists? This is pretty off-topic, but I want to point out that if this is true, then I can immediately know your worldview is wrong since I can introspect that I don't know that God exists.

In any case, I find the claim that children would knowingly bring childhood leukemia on themselves insufficiently justified; and the caveat that these choices are somehow made in aggregate (I don't remember what terms you used for it, this thread is so convoluted at this point) is insufficiently defined. I don't think a reasonable person would be convinced that kids choose leukemia, because they know God exists but want to rebel, or whatever; and I don't think proposing that humanity decides kids have leukemia in aggregate is justified (or even cognitive) either.

Snipping the rest as it's repitition from what's already covered.

We really need to re-collapse this down.

 

[Rise]

It is enjoyable to be able to have a debate/discussion over these issues with you because you are one who can formulate logical arguments well enough to cause me to have to consider the issues in more detail.
And also one who is honest enough to realize when their argument was in logical error so they need to reformulate it with a different counter argument.
Those are two traits that are often sorely lacking on internet forums and without intellectual honesty productive discussion is impossible.

I was saying that the Problem of Evil as I was presenting it is presented as-is, with the premises as-is. If the glove doesn't fit, you don't have to wear it, basically. The PoE is aimed at the god of the philosophers with very general properties; the question then becomes whether any individual deity has those same properties or not. Even a little deviation from them may be enough to escape the logical problem. (The fallback at that point is discussing the evidential problem).

Your problem, as I pointed out, was that you weren’t just sticking with the premises of the PoE. You were bringing in other premises about what God can or cannot do, or what man can or cannot do, and acting as though your other premises must be accepted when answering the PoE question - without demonstrating any logical requirement for why they must be accepted.

One example being your premise that God cannot give to His created beings (Such as man, angels, etc) authority/control over aspects of creation outside of their own body which is then subject to the independent will of those beings.

Fair enough, but regardless of its history, its premises are generally sterile of particular religious views. If we want to view the omni-attributes as particularly Abrahamic, then okay; I don't think it's super relevant. If it applies to Abrahamic deities then it applies, if it doesn't, then it doesn't.

It should be noted that the PoE as a question can’t be philosophically neutral if the question itself only arises out of a challenge to the Biblical idea of God.
And if you look at history there is little reason to think it came from anywhere else.

The PoE question is only relevant if people believe a deity with those attributes exists or could exist.

This is relevant to realize because if the PoE was indeed originally formulated as a challenge to the God of the Bible then logically you would expect to find your answers to the question in the Bible.

If free will is possible without emotional suffering, then it makes the Problem worse, not better: why, then, is there emotional suffering?

I already told you why according to the Bible. God is the source of love. To be disconnected from that necessarily results in a lack of love which we call evil.

So the problem is not God’s problem. Which therefore doesn’t violate his benevolence.

You say that it will not be possible to have things like unrequited love, or broken friendships, and this sort of thing: does this mean humans will always choose perfectly morally correctly in their interactions with one another?

Those in union with God would by definition only act perfectly loving.

Why couldn't they have started out with this sort of moral perfection?

They did. That’s the whole point of redemption. Jesus came to restore what we lost; which will culminate at the end of the age with a return to union with God and a restoration of eden-like conditions on earth.

They made the choice to leave union with God.

Prior to that we can believe they acted with perfect love towards each other.

After rebellion the effects of disunion started to come in and Cain murders Abel.

OK, so we'll need to talk about this particular theodicy then. If I were to summarize the theodicy, it would be that "Powerful non-God agencies (in this case, humans', somehow) are responsible for the laws of physics changing to allow for physical suffering."
This is a form of a free will theodicy; it's not unlike some theologians' free will theodicy that demons' agency is what's responsible for suffering (Plantinga takes this view for instance).
The question arises: why would God allow humans to have this power? God could just as easily set up the metaphysical laws of the universe such that humans aren't capable of altering physics in this way.

…

Arguably, setting up the metaphysics of the universe to work such that humans can introduce physical suffering by altering the physics of the universe (somehow) is like putting a loaded revolver in an infant's crib: that kind of power doesn't belong there. God is still culpable for it even if humans somehow caused the change by granting humans the capacity to make the change.

…

Is being able to change the laws of physics necessary to fulfill the condition of free agency? No. So we couldn't defend this choice like that.

…

Probably the biggest question is still what it means to have a "union" with God such that it literally alters the physics of the universe outside of God's control (you say God literally can't control it because it would entail acting against God's nature, correct)?

…

I think what I need from you is a step by step process to explain what it means to have this union, what it means to choose to break it, how this translates to changing the physics of the universe. There is just so much that could be wrong with all of this that I need details.

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Whence comes this guarantee, if humans have this power to fundamentally change the universe so that there is suffering, that there will never be suffering again?

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That depends on what exactly you mean by this. Our free will is constrained by many things. I can't walk on the ceiling, I can't inflict novel forms of torture on people like turning them inside out with my mind, I can't will myself to be a horse instead of a human, I can't bring my TV remote to life with a consciousness of its own, etc.

Were God to set up the physics of the universe in such a way that physical suffering were not possible, humans would still have free agency. The inability to do some things doesn't equate to the absence of agency.

…

But this is the case. You claim that humans, through their actions, can alter the physics of the univserse; but to be able to do that, some higher metaphysical thing allows humans to do that. If humans have this power, then it is a property that they possess: and who controls what properties humans possess?

I have the ability to manipulate a mouse with my hand because of the way I'm (ostensibly, in the context of theism) created. If I have the power to change physics, it is also because of the way I'm created. This is rehashing some stuff I said in my last post, but God can create humans with whatever properties God wants: including the inability to change the physics of the universe to allow for suffering (and still allow for free agency).

…

Skipping, you know what my response to this will be (such as from the response directly above, and from the previous post). If God gives humans the ability to instantiate suffering in the universe, then God is culpable for granting the ability to do so. I'm as guilty for dropping a loaded gun in a night club as a potential shooter is for using it.

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There are malevolent ways to grant free will, in response to (3), which was my point. For instance, if I'm a very fancy schmancy programmer with some very advanced computers, and I'm creating my own Matrix-style world inhabited by actual thinking, feeling, sapient AI's, I have some choices about how to construct their universe.

I can make it so that their choices don't lead to physical suffering (but they are still choices), or I can make it so it's possible for them to make choices that can hurt themselves, or, worse, hurt other people through their actions. If the first one is possible to create, yet I choose the second, that is evidence that I'm not omnibenevolent.

…

How does not acting in accordance with God's nature and character literally, directly change the laws of physics: how does this process work? Why did God give us such an irresponsible power? Why can't God override this and still directly control the physics of the universe? (This is where I was saying it sounds like omnipotence, again, might be out of the picture if God can't do this).

There are three critical errors in your understanding of what I argued for.

1. You seem to want to try to make a conceptual divide between death and suffering, as though they have different causes - but Biblically they are inextricably linked together as being the result of the same cause. That is why in Revelation God in the same sentence says he will put an end to death, physical pain, and emotional pain all together. Because they all come out of the same problem and have the same solution.

2. You don’t need a physical law to get death and non-love (ie. evil). It is the logically necessary and unavoidable absence of God’s nature (life and love) in a situation.

3. Human or angelic/demonic authority over other aspects of creation is not invoked as an explanation for why death and evil exist in general, for the reasons I just gave. They are only brought into the equation as one possible way to explain why Adam’s descendants and earth’s biosphere came under the effects of death and evil after the fall of Adam.

But we can’t begin to answer the question of why that would happen without first recognizing the truth that God did not have to be responsible for creating death and evil (which includes suffering as a consequence of both).

You are operating out of a false premise that God needs to give humans power over the laws of the universe for death and evil (lack of love) to exist.
Which leads you to a false conclusion that God could have just changed the laws to work differently.

Which is missing the point that the consequence of death and evil were never the result of a law God created, but were a logically necessary fact of God being the only source of life that exists, and being by His nature is love, when combined with man’s free will to reject God’s gift of life and to choose they don’t want to be like God.

So if man doesn’t want to be like God he commits sin, which means he ends up willing to do evil, is separated from God, so now no longer has access to the source of life.

After all, God is responsible for physics such that I can't teleport to Mars with the power of my mind,

You have to be careful what premises you try to assume are true for the purposes of the PoE question. Not every spiritual or religious belief system is going to accept your premise that they don’t have the ability to unlock the power to teleport.

Biblically we do see people teleport. But it is said to be done by the Spirit of God. The dividing line between when something is just God doing it himself on our behalf vs us borrowing God’s power vs God giving us the ability to access a power directly by our will is an interesting and worthwhile question - but not a question that we would need to get into yet without certain foundational premises being established first.

 

[Rise]

and God is responsible for my limitations as a human not to be able to, say, create my own universe with the power of my mind either.

Given the nature of what death is and how it is experienced, I already explained why there are no limitations God could put on man to prevent them from separating from God without violating their free will.

What would you have God do?
Force you to stay in relational union with Him against your will?

Aside from the fact that such a thing could feasibly violate God’s benevolent nature, what you suggest would not logically even be possible from a Biblical standpoint.
Because if union with God requires being in agreement with God’s will, then your desire to be disunited from God would put you in disagreement with God’s will and thus you cannot continue to abide in God while having a will opposed to God’s.

What does it mean to be "connected" or "disconnected" from God, what exactly? This is not conveying a meaningful concept to me. It seems like a deepity. For instance if I wear a particularly girly dress rather than a blouse and jeans as usual, I might joke that I'm "connected" to my feminine side, but colloquially I'm just saying that I'm expressing my gender through my clothes. If I say that I'm "connected" to my cat I mean that I feel a kinship with him, an emotional bond of love and trust with him. But you seem to be expressing something different than either of these two contexts. What exactly are you saying?

The word “connected” was not intended to imply a figurative or metaphorical idea.
The word implies a real consequential relationship between two entities.

An analogy could be a light plugged into a power generator.
Or a pool that can be filled up connecting it to a flowing river by means of an irrigation pipe.

Disconnect yourself from the source of life and it ceases to flow into you, so to speak. You start to experience the effects of what happens when you are cut off from that source of life – death.

The same is true of disconnecting yourself from the source of love, joy, peace, pleasure, everything good, etc. The opposite is what you must necessarily, logically, unavoidably experience.

This is why the Bible uses analogies of those being in God as being like a tree planted by a river in the desert. A tree disconnected from a source of water will suffer and ultimately die.
Jeremiah 17:5-8, Psalm 1

How was this relationship rejected in the first place (and for instance, did humans have knowledge of exactly what would happen if they rejected it? Because God would be culpable for giving them that or not).

God explicitly warned Adam and Eve that in the day they ate of the fruit of the tree of good or evil they would die.

Why don't individual humans get to make this choice during their lifetime before suffering? I am sorry, I'm trying not to use some kind of shotgun method on you by throwing out a lot and seeing what sticks, but these all seem like pertinent questions.

That is the main question we are left with. But, as I said: We can’t rightly expect to rightly discern the answer to that question from a Biblical standpoint if we don’t first acknowledge the Biblical truth that death/suffering does not need to be something God created nor something under His control.

If you try to answer the question of why death/suffering transferred to the earth and the descendants of Adam without making sure the premises you are entering the question with are correct, you will be unlikely to get a Biblically correct answer.

This goes back to the eschatology question for instance: how, in the future, do humans perfectly never freely decide to reject this relationship again (or do they)?

…

So how does God ensure this doesn't happen again, whatever "this" is, if it happened before? I'm sorry, this is a repeat question. I will try not to do that, but these things keep coming up.

…

You say that in Christian eschatology, there will eventually be no more sorrow: what causes this change? Will humans no longer have free will in heaven?

That is a worthwhile question – but not a question which is logically required to have an answer in order for the PoE question to have been sufficiently answered with regards to how evil can exist without contradicting God’s benevolent nature.

Unless you’re trying to say you think what I outlined has some kind of logical flaw in it. You would need to outline what specific logical flaw you think that is.

Logically, you don't need to have a detailed explanation of how something works in order to say that logically such a thing would solve the PoE question if it were true.

You only need to be able to explain further how something could work if you think you've discovered a logically flaw in the idea that needs to be worked out with further explanation.

It seems logically possible for God to allow people not to be "in union" with Him (whatever that means) while exerting his omnipotence to prevent the universe's physics from changing in a way that allows for physical suffering.

If we're saying that the physics of the universe are outside of God's hands, then we're saying God is not the philosopher's definition of omnipotent (which is to actualize any logically possible state of affairs). There doesn't seem to be a logical contradiction with God simply keeping the physics of the universe the way they were before the Fall or whatever.
You will first have to explain what you mean by this "God is the source of life" business (it sounds noncognitive, but we will see); but if God literally can't control physics, then God is not what's generally understood to be omnipotent, and so the PoE would not apply.
It seems perfectly possible for a person not to want a relationship with God (in the usual sense that we mean the word: so this would be a theist that believes God exists, but doesn't want to talk to God or interact with God's personality) yet still live in a universe where the physics doesn't give their children leukemia.

Your arguments are based on a false premise that death and life are created laws to govern the universe.

Death/suffering is the absence of God.
Life/peace/joy/etc is the nature of God and He is the only source of that.

It would be logically impossible for you to receive God’s life without being connected to Him.

And it would violate your free will if God forced you to be connected to Him.

This will also depend on the other theodicy (about whether the suffering of the child could have been prevented in the first place). It still signals non-omnibenevolence to offer reward after pain if the pain was unnecessary in the first place. So, we will see when we discuss that. (Re: the "God is the source of life" theodicy).

Actually, you’re getting ahead of yourself.
Whether or not you can call any situation a violation of God’s omnibenevolence first depends on your ability to establish that you have the means with which to judge God’s actions as either moral or immoral.

Upon what basis do you presume to be able to judge the morality of God’s actions?

This was responded to above, I think in the 2nd post.

It’s not clear to me what you mean by "2nd post”.

I don’t recall seeing you provide a valid answer to the question of what your objective moral basis for presuming to judge God’s actions is.

Waiting on clarification of this "source of life" argument. As of now it's apparently non-cognitive.

Accusing what I said of being “non-cognitive” without outlining any specific logical flaw in what I have said is the fallacy of “appeal to personal incredulity”.
Just because you don’t understand what I said doesn’t mean it’s not true.

For you to be able to call it that you’d need to be able to identify what exactly, logically, you think is wrong with it.

If you can’t do that then all you’re doing is saying you don’t understand it. But your lack of understanding doesn’t mean it’s not true.

All three PoE posts have been about this exact special pleading theodicy.

Your claim is false to call it a special pleading fallacy.
It would only be special pleading if there was not logical justification for why a given situation should be treated differently. In this case, reasons for why this situation is different are given and justified.

Given the fact that we are presuming God is all knowing, and we know you are not all knowing, it is perfectly possible that God could have reasons for what he does that are beyond your knowledge and ability to even imagine.

Therefore, it would be impossible for you to be in a position of ever judging the merits of God’s decisions because you lack the cognitive capability to do so.

Indeed, it would be reasonable to conclude it is very likely any decision God makes, no matter how simple it appears in it’s effect, is at least in part motivated by knowledge and understanding that you will never have.

Therefore, upon what basis do you presume to be capable of judging the wisdom of God’s decisions?

We would need to have justification for a reason existing to posit this, otherwise we fall into an epistemic trap from which we can never escape (see the first "Problem of Evil and Special Pleading" post).

Your reasoning is a fallacious nonsequitur. Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise.
Just because you are ignorant of God’s reason for a decision doesn’t mean you can logically conclude he can’t possibly have a good reason.

There is nothing that logically requires you to be given the exact reason for a decision God has made in order for us to be able to logically conclude it is possible, and even likely, that God is making decisions based on knowledge and understanding you don’t have access to since we have already presumed he is all knowing whereas you are not all knowing.

Given that God is making decisions based on information and understanding you don’t have access to, we have sound reason to conclude that its possible he could have good reasons for doing something which you do not understand.

We see this reality in our own experience with small children. There is a point where they are too young to cognitively understand why you would forbid something, even if you tried to explain it to them, but that doesn’t mean we can conclude the parent doesn’t have a good reason for forbidding something just because the child lacks the ability to fully know or understand the parent’s reasoning.

Therefore, you have no logical basis for concluding you know God’s action is malevolence – because it is impossible for you to know.

 

[Rise]

I am picking my battles for right now, but I do doubt the claim that humans could infinitely make correct moral emotional choices unless who they are is fundamentally changed.

Indeed! You have just unintentionally described the Gospel message. That’s why the Bible says we become new creations in Christ.
That’s why it says with man this thing is impossible but with God all things are possible.
That’s why is says God will give us a new heart.
That’s why baptism is a picture of dying to the old self to live to the new self.
That’s why it says we experience a new birth.
That’s why it says Christ died so we may live.

You have correctly identified the problem – without realizing the Bible not only already identified the problem but has also prescribed the solution for it.

2 Corinthians 3:18, Romans 12:2, 2 Thessalonians 3:5,
2 Corinthians 5:17, Ezekiel 36:26, Ezekiel 11:19, John 3:3-5,
Matthew 19:24-26, Galatians 2:20

But if who they are is fundamentally changed, it just raises the question "why not have made them that way from the start?" It makes the Problem worse.

He did! That’s precisely the point.

There is no reason to believe Adam and Eve suffered any emotional lack or pain prior to the fall because there was no sin.

Sin could be defined as doing that which God would not do.

If Adam and Eve were without sin prior to the fall, they would have been acting with perfect love towards others - meaning there would be no opportunity for emotional pain to happen.

No, most philosophers already reject this notion (that omnipotence is power "without limits"). The reason is because God is as subject to logic as the rest of us; saying otherwise would be to put the cart before the horse. In order for God to be God, He must exemplify logical identity (God = God, A = A), and God can't "make" this fact be true without already being God in the first place. This can all be framed in terms of the aseity-sovereignty paradox whereby we have these two intuitions that God both exists a se and with perfect sovereignty over all things: it's actually a paradox without limits.

All we have to do to trigger the paradox is ask if God could have chosen to have a different set of properties. The answer obviously can't be "yes," because in order to choose His own properties, God would already have to have properties related to making choices, such as the knowledge of what choices are available and the power to actualize them. Thus saying that God is the foundation of logic puts the cart before the horse: God is relevantly dependent on logic, not the other way around. The very fact that God has properties at all means that logic is transcendental to, not relevantly dependent on, God.

What you have said is actually not logically sound – and the reason it isn’t actually becomes proof for the Biblical concept of God as the only logical conclusion possible.

There are two problems with your line of of argumentation:

1. If God is subject to something that is not under his control then he is not all powerful.

If there is a law of logic that exists above him then he’s not all powerful.

Omnipotence with limits is not omnipotence by definition.

We would not call God omniscient if we had to put caveats on even one thing he can’t know.

We would not call God omnibenevolent if there was even one slightly immoral thing he could do.


2. You don’t have any logical basis for saying that logic is not just a facet of our universe God created which God Himself is not subject to. In the same way that time is a facet of our universe that God is not subject to.
Who is to say we just can't wrap our heads around imagining what a state of illogic existence could look like because our universe isn't built according to those rules?
Just like we have trouble truly understanding infinity and eternity because we live in a universe defined by time.

You can’t logically know that logic transcends our universe to the existence of God that preceded our universe. You presume it does, but you can’t establish it as a logical fact.
Logic cannot be proven to be true using logic - that would be circular reasoning.

That is where the Biblical idea of God ends up being the only one that makes logical sense.
We have a logical basis for saying why God is subject to logic based on certain pieces of information the Bible tells us about God.

God is consistent with logic because God is the embodiment of truth and cannot change. As the embodiment of truth, he cannot violate who He is with things like contradictions.

Philosophically the laws of logic are nothing more than observational descriptions of what the nature of objective truth is and how it works.
So they are describing aspects of God’s nature as singular objective Truth.

But from a philosophical standpoint you have no basis for assuming logic is transcendentally true without God's nature being that which makes it transcendentally true.

The only reason philosophers and scientists assume logic is transcendentally true without being able to prove it is true, in the absence of a Biblical worldview that would give them a basis for why it could be true, is for the expediency's sake of realizing that their job would be impossible to do if they didn't assume it.

I believe the conclusions are true by those like Dr Stephen Meyer, philosopher of science, who says the scientific revolution was only made possible by the Biblical worldview which gave us reason to believe that if given enough time and research we would always be able to discover the underlying order behind how the universe worked. Presupposing an orderly and consistent creator is what allows you to assume you will find a more cohesive and elegant order as you dig deeper - otherwise why not just come up with a series of disjointed segregated rules for every circumstance, or simply just believe things don't have to behave consistently? The later certainly makes it easier to come up with answers but it stifles you from digging to obtain a deeper understanding.

I believe it is not a coincidence that the scientific revolution started by Francis Bacon occurred after the protestant reformation where direct knowledge of what the Bible said became widespread and was put directly in the hands of the common people. It would start to shape their view of the world directly based on what it said instead of people just going off the inaccurate traditions that were passed down to them.

Based on that, we would conclude that science has continued to coast off the philosophical presuppositions that come out of a Biblical worldview long after abandoning belief in the Bible.

Should it be no surprise then that modern cosmology, in a vain attempt to explain how the universe could exist without a theistic creator, ends pushing itself past the brink of logic to outright abandon it because there is no other way to justify a universe without a creator unless you are willing to embrace a contradiction or logical impossibility.
Such as Krauss advocating the idea that something could come from nothing while illogically defining nothing to include something.
Or others advocating that abstract ideas like math could by themselves exist apart from a mind and create concrete things like matter and energy, which vilenkin pointed out would force one to be positing a mind existed prior to the creation of matter and energy.
(I am not trying to drag cosmology into this thread because I haven't gotten around to responding to your posts in the other thread yet. I was planning to get to that next but got sidetracked here longer than I expected with a tempting discussion about theology and logic).

The point I am trying to make is that if you abandon the basis you have for concluding logic is true, it is inevitable that eventually someone is going to start trying to explain the way the universe works without regards to logic because they don't think it's necessary. Especially if they are forced into a corner where they have no other way to explain a universe without a creator unless they are willing to embrace logical contradictions to do so. (you might want to dispute whether or not they are embracing logical contradictions in this case, but the point remains that if you unmoor yourself from having a basis to believe logic transcends creation then eventually anything will become permissible).
You end up trying to abandon the tenets of science in order to hold to a materialistic philosophy.
Reigiious people can do the same thing when they feel cornered to accept illogic in order to hold to what they want to believe if true.
Materialism is no different as an unproveable philosophical worldview than an unproveable religious worldview.

It reminds me of a medieval logical tenet which concluded that if you allowed only one logical contradiction into your line of reasoning then you could use that one logical flaw to conclude literally anything was true that you wanted to. All it takes is one logical contradiction being asserted as true because you can use that flaw to build other flaws into the argument and build a road to whatever you want to be true. Or to put it another way: one contradiction in your premises can be used to force other false premises into your argument, if you are willing to accept the first false premise without correction.

That is part of why I make a point of insisting we establish truly sound premises before trying to build a structure of logic on top of it.

 

[Rise]

In any case, if omnipotence doesn't have logical limits, then the word itself is non-cognitive and meaningless: nothing is being expressed if it's supposed to be some a-logical property (these last two words in combination are also cognitively empty, equally meaningless).

If you think you can’t have omnipotence without having limits on omnipotence (thus making it not omnipotent by definition) then all that proves is that the PoE as formulated was never logically sound to begin with and thus is a logically invalid question.

But the PoE never tried to put limits on omnipotence – you’re the one trying to do that based on other presuppositions you bring to the table about what God's nature and limitations are.

By doing that you abandon the very premise of the PoE formualtion.

Only the Biblical worldview I gave you allows God to retain the attribute of true omnipotence without being subjugated to forces beyond his control.

Even theologians and apologists run into the same problem you did on this issue: They will assert it as simple fact that God is all powerful but he can't create a contradiction without ever giving a theologian reason for why not. They just concede God can't do that without providing any reason why we should think he can't.

It's possible, and in my opinion more straightforward, to just understand that omnipotent beings still have logical limits by the incorrigible and transcendental nature of logic. It doesn't require referring to dubious texts passed down by cultural diffusion.

Except your method doesn’t work - Not if you want to have an all powerful god.

But that’s beside the point because you’ve now got much bigger problem with that you just said: Believing abstract ideas have the power to bring an all powerful real being under subjugation to the abstract idea.

You run into the same problem Vilenkin pointed out about those who advocate that math could have existed prior to energy and matter. How can abstract ideas exist without a mind to create them? How can abstract ideas act casually to create or act upon real things?

Logic is an abstract idea. Abstract ideas can’t exist independent of a mind to create and acknowledge them. Abstract ideas have no ability to act casually on real things.

Proposing that abstract logic can exist prior to god and above him, subjecting god to itself, is not only logically impossible based on everything we know about how abstract ideas work, but is ironically a more fantastical thing to propose than the all-powerful deity you are trying to describe - because at least the later isn’t logically impossible.

Logic, like math, is merely a mental description of how something works.
In the case of logic, it is a description of the nature of objective truth and a guide for how to recognize it.
But what is the objective truth it is describing?
In the case of math we have the universe.

If logic were only a description of the universe then it could not transcend the universe to describe God.
The only way it could transcend the universe is if logic doesn't come out the design of the universe.

But the only way logic can transcend the universe with a truly omnipotent God is if the logic we see in the universe is merely an expression of God's nature. Then it would exist with God prior to the universe's creation but without being a force beyond God's control that subjugates God to it.

Biblically God is the definition of objective truth. So logic is describing the nature of God.

First, I have not suggested that God should constrain choices so that they can never cause emotional pain to others (in fact, I said the exact opposite; that God is not culpable for people feeling emotional pain because I suggested it's probably necessary for free will to exist, whereas physical suffering is not).

You missed the point: If you accept the premise that taking away our free will isn’t an option for God’s design, then you are indeed trying to claim that God can’t have the power to prevent emotional pain because you think it is a necessary requirement for free will to exist.

Which means god is not omnipotent. He can’t design a world in which it’s possible to have free will and avoid emotional pain at the same time.

Trying to demand god be constrained by logic raises the issue I pointed out above.

You have no logical reason to assume God couldn’t have created this universe to run according to different rules of logic.
Or perhaps simply changed the dynamic of how relationships work in some way we can’t imagine so that no one can get emotionally hurt.
Or even just to simply take away people’s ability to feel negative emotions about relational things.

The point is, there are a lot of theoretical objections one could potentially raise against the kinds of limitations you are trying to put on your version of the philosophical god in the POE. Objections that don’t go away until your idea of God is refounded on Biblical assumptions about what God can do, can’t do, and why.

Second, I also doubt that a god exists at all: obviously, I'm using the framework of theism and moral realism to make an argument; which is the basis of reductio ad absurdum: entertaining premises to show a contradiction or absurdity is entailed.

That’s also why your entire exercise ends up being a non-starter from the beginning – because you have no basis for engaging in moral realism with regards to analyzing God's actions.

If you don’t believe a creator of the universe exists then you have no objective standard by which to judge God. As only a creator could provide an objective standard that transcends human subjectivity.

And if you believe this omni-being is the creator of the universe, then you logically have no grounds for accusing their designs of being immoral because by definition of being the creator they are the ones who decided how the design as suppose to be. No one else can decide that but them. Therefore no one is in a position to say it was suppose to be different.

Third, even outside of the premises, I can present moral arguments: they just depend on if the listener shares the same values. Given common values, moral arguments can still be made because moral arguments can come in the form of hypothetical imperatives: if I value X, then I should do Y (that sort of thing). If a person doesn't share the same values, then obviously yes, they could reject the argument: but I'm usually making arguments based on very common values like altruism and empathy. If someone doesn't value those I wouldn't want to talk to them anyway; but indeed, theoretically they could reject the arguments.

You aren’t talking about objective morality at that point. You’re talking about commonly shared subjectivity. Which would be a fallacious appeal to popularity. Something is not true just because it is popular, nor is it objectively moral just because it is popular.

The definition of objective morality is that it continues to be moral regardless of what people think about it - and regardless of how many people think it.

You cannot logically ever accuse God of being truly objectively immoral if you don’t even claim to have an objective standard of morality with which to try judging God with.

I'm not sure where you think this has happened. Be more specific where you think I've ccome to a conclusion based on what I like or not. I have framed the argument in terms of the incongruence of omnibenevolence with suffering, and stated multiple times (granted, not directly in our discussion) that the argument makes no judgment on whether suffering is "bad," just that it's incongruent with omnibenevolence.

In what I was responding to, you said:

This whole argument that human children "choose" (somehow by nature of some aggregate choice, whatever that means) to suffer horribly and then die is just not one that I'm willing to bite without a lot less nebulousness; and I don't think anyone should accept it without a lot more clarity either.

You said you’re “not willing” to accept it unless its “less nebulous” and don’t think you should have to accept it unless it’s “more clear” to you.

This seems to be an issue of preference rather than an objection based on logical truth. Which would make it a fallacious appeal.
Because you are not giving us any logical basis to believe my conclusion is incorrect.
You’re just saying you won’t accept it unless you know more about it how exactly it works.

Logically, that’s kind of like saying 400 years ago you wouldn’t accept the scientific fact that stuff falls down when you drop it unless someone can explain to you the exacting details of how gravity works and why it works the way it does (something which you couldn’t even fully do today).

I have noticed a repeating pattern with many of your objections: They focus around demanding to know exactly how things work to an exacting degree that isn’t actually necessary in order to establish whether or not the particular fact in question can be shown to be logically true.

There’s nothing wrong with asking the how and why questions; I share the same desire. But we have to make a distinction about whether or not the absence of an answer to those questions constitutes a logical basis for refuting the conclusion being true.

Otherwise it’s simply a matter of preference that you object to the conclusion on the basis that you would like to have more information about how and why it works before you accept it. But your personal reason for objecting doesn't refute the logical validity of the conclusion.

How can a finite being share perfectly in God's character and nature, for all time without error?

Being finite has nothing to do with it. You don't need to share in God's infinitude to reflect his nature.
Anymore than a mirror needs to be the size of the sun in order to reflect it's light.

You could think of it perhaps as the sympathetic resonance of one struck tuning fork imparting it's vibration to another still tuning fork.

Doing it without error has nothing to do with your ability to make the change, but simply to receive that which God wants to give you and be willing to let go of that which gets in the way of it.
By simply making the choice to be open to receive God's nature and put away that which is not of God.

That is why Biblically we see the idea that this is achieved by God's Spirit working in us and not our own effort.

If that's possible, why hasn't it been that way from the start?

It was. That's what Adam and Eve had in Eden.
As long as they did not make the choice to eat from the tree of good and evil, they could presumably do anything they wanted because what they wanted would always be in line with the nature of God and therefore not sin.

In the same way Jesus, who is called the second Adam, the only one to walk in perfect union with God, said he only did what he saw the Father (God) doing.

If it's not possible, how is the conception of heaven coherent unless free will is taken away or humankind's nature fundamentally changed (and if that's possible, why not have just started with that fundamental change)?

As I pointed out already, your nature would be fundamentally changed. Changed to be what it was originally.

You also haven't given any reason why the concept of heaven would not be coherent.
What specific reason do you think it wouldn't be?
Is your definition of heaven even consistent with the Bible?

 

[Meow Mix]

It is enjoyable to be able to have a debate/discussion over these issues with you because you are one who can formulate logical arguments well enough to cause me to have to consider the issues in more detail.
And also one who is honest enough to realize when their argument was in logical error so they need to reformulate it with a different counter argument.
Those are two traits that are often sorely lacking on internet forums and without intellectual honesty productive discussion is impossible.

I'm enjoying the discussion as well, but it's becoming somewhat unwieldy in scope for single-night responses for me (I work full-time overnights, during which I post, but I'm also working on my thesis; which requires concentration).

We have now brought up enough tertiary conversations that it may be best to split up our responses so that each post/response deals with a particular subject. For instance, we have the main discussion about the PoE and theodicies, but we've introduced the broad and interesting subject of logical limitations and omnipotence as well (probably among a couple other things that I'm not immediately recalling).

I think this would cut down on repetition on both of our parts, so I'm going to try to organize my responses today/tomorrow in this manner. If you don't approve or it doesn't work, I can reformulate the responses in the traditional way that we've been doing so.

Edit: I've pasted everything into a Google Doc, which helpfully keeps the quote formatting so I can tell who's saying what. I'm going to color code things by topic and then rearrange everything and see how many relevantly distanced topics there are.

Then I will post responses that specify what topic is being addressed as a sort of title.

 

[Rise]

I realized I missed responding to part of your post:

To say that humans magic the physics of the universe into some other state, that's not a really cognitive concept unless you can explain some mechanism for that, why God allows it, why God granted the ability in the first place, etc., otherwise you will still deal with the Problem.

This goes back to your misconception that death/evil is an alternative of physics.

You have to make the concept cognitive, otherwise you're just saying "humans did an unknowable thing in an unknowable way," and might as well have said the slithey toves were gyring and gimbling in the wabe.

You have not identified any logical fault with what I outlined.
You would need to give any specific reason why any specific piece of knowledge is required for what I said to hold up logically.

Your desire to know all the hows and whys behind it doesn't make it untrue just because you don't fully understand it.
Anymore than a specific scientific model is invalidated just because you don't have all the answers for the hows and whys behind it.
That would be the logical fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity.

In your worldview, do you assume that I "know" that God exists? This is pretty off-topic, but I want to point out that if this is true, then I can immediately know your worldview is wrong since I can introspect that I don't know that God exists.

You don't deny that you have an inner knowing of morality which convicts you of right or wrong. That is what the Bible says.
Romans 1:18-23
What it also says is that creation and your inner knowing also bear witness to God's reality and the fact that He is your creator.

But according to the Bible you could be suppressing your inner knowledge of what is true in an act of self deception.

As with any act of self deception, you wouldn't be able to admit to yourself you were engaging in it because to admit that would mean you could no longer engage in doing it.

That's why no one would be without excuse on the day of judgement.

You therefore have everything you need to know according to God. Claiming you don't have enough knowledge won't be a defense.

In any case, I find the claim that children would knowingly bring childhood leukemia on themselves insufficiently justified;

...

I don't think a reasonable person would be convinced that kids choose leukemia, because they know God exists but want to rebel, or whatever; and I don't think proposing that humanity decides kids have leukemia in aggregate is justified (or even cognitive) either.

I never said that. You are misunderstanding what I outlined.

The Bible does not support the idea that children choose to have evil or suffering done to them.

I am not sure what you mean by "in aggregate" humanity choosing something.

and the caveat that these choices are somehow made in aggregate (I don't remember what terms you used for it, this thread is so convoluted at this point) is insufficiently defined.

I don't know what you are trying to refer to about choices being made in aggregate.

 

[Meow Mix]

I realized I missed responding to part of your post:



This goes back to your misconception that death/evil is an alternative of physics.



You have not identified any logical fault with what I outlined.
You would need to give any specific reason why any specific piece of knowledge is required for what I said to hold up logically.

Your desire to know all the hows and whys behind it doesn't make it untrue just because you don't fully understand it.
Anymore than a specific scientific model is invalidated just because you don't have all the answers for the hows and whys behind it.
That would be the logical fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity.



You don't deny that you have an inner knowing of morality which convicts you of right or wrong. That is what the Bible says.
Romans 1:18-23
What it also says is that creation and your inner knowing also bear witness to God's reality and the fact that He is your creator.

But according to the Bible you could be suppressing your inner knowledge of what is true in an act of self deception.

As with any act of self deception, you wouldn't be able to admit to yourself you were engaging in it because to admit that would mean you could no longer engage in doing it.

That's why no one would be without excuse on the day of judgement.

You therefore have everything you need to know according to God. Claiming you don't have enough knowledge won't be a defense.



I never said that. You are misunderstanding what I outlined.

The Bible does not support the idea that children choose to have evil or suffering done to them.

I am not sure what you mean by "in aggregate" humanity choosing something.



I don't know what you are trying to refer to about choices being made in aggregate.

These are the topics I've isolated. I'll make a post for each (with minor topics comprising one post). By post I don't mean separate threads (unless you feel we should). But I will preface responses with a topic sentence specifying what the response is handling.

Alternatively we can make these separate threads if you want to: in the One on One section to avoid having to respond to too much at once.

Copying/pasting from Google doc (note that these aren't final titles, they're biased as personal notes, the topics would be phrased better to encapsulate their topics):

Topics:

1. God as the source of love/life theodicy
   
   
2. Union with God: humans act perfectly loving, death and suffering a consequence of absence.
   
   
3. Non-cognitivity is not appeal to incredulity
   
   
4. Special pleading and the PoE
   
   
5. Omnipotence, logic, aseity-sovereignty paradox: why omnipotence is bounded by logic and logic is transcendental to God.

Minor topics:

1. “God giving authority/control over aspects of creation outside their own body”
   
   
2. PoE as response to Biblical/Abrahamic God as opposed to sterile philosopher’s god
   
   
3. Ability to argue suffering isn’t compatible with omnibenevolence without moral realism
   
   
4. Comments on science and Bible
   
   
5. Comments on cosmology, esp. math existing without minds

 

[Meow Mix]

@Rise to be clear I don't mean starting these topics over from the beginning, I still intend to use full quotations and go where we left off. I'm just organizing them rather than having them spread out and repeated all over the place.

 

[Meow Mix]

@Rise

I will begin with the topic of non-cognitivity, because it will be important to have this one squashed for resolving later instances.

Accusing what I said of being “non-cognitive” without outlining any specific logical flaw in what I have said is the fallacy of “appeal to personal incredulity”. Just because you don’t understand what I said doesn’t mean it’s not true.

For you to be able to call it that you’d need to be able to identify what exactly, logically, you think is wrong with it.

First: It would be impossible to identify "what, exactly, logically, you think is wrong with it" with a noncognitive utterance. For instance, if I were to say to you, "'Twas brillig this last Tuesday, and the slithey toves were gyring and gimbling in the wabe," you would be able to respond to me with "I'm not sure that what you just said is cognitive." It would be on me to convey meaning to you at that point.

You couldn't point out where in my utterance a logical problem exists because that ignores the fundamental nature of the objection: how could you do this if you aren't sure what it means to be brillig, or for toves to be slithey (or what toves are)? You can infer that "brillig" and "slithey" are adjectives, and you can infer that "toves" and "wabe" are nouns, but other than that there's no cognitive substance for you to note logical problems from.

I couldn't then turn around and accuse you of the fallacy of appeal to incredulity: this would be misplaced of me, as it is for you in this instance.

While this post is limited to non-cognitivity, I will connect it to one of the other posts coming up: for instance, if you tell me that "God is the source of life," that doesn't impart any cognitive meaning to me. I know that "being a source" is a property related to impartation in some way, I know some contexts of the word "life," but it's clear from the context of how you're making this utterance that you mean something different than we normally mean by these terms: so, in the absence of sufficient clarification of these meanings, nothing at all has been communicated to me other than "God does an unknown thing in an unknown way," just like slithey toves gimbling in wabes is saying "unknown things do unknown actions in unknown ways."

Just because a word appears familiar doesn't mean that it's cognitive. For instance, I could say that slithey toves purple their way through wabes; but it would be clear from the context that I don't mean "purple" in the way that we normally mean it: though I used a familiar word, I still haven't imparted any sort of cognitive meaning to you from the utterance.

My main point here is that responding to objections of non-cognitivity with "that's the fallacy of appeal to incredulity, you have to point out what's specifically wrong with my utterance" are not good objections by the very nature of what non-cognitivity even means. It's actually on the utterer to ensure that the noises or utterances they make impart some meaning, and so become communication.

Do we agree so far?

Additionally, it's possible for a person to fully believe that an utterance they're making is cognitive when it may not be. A good example of this is Frege and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica and the assertion that (here comes the utterance) "there is a set of all sets which do not contain themselves." Every word in that utterance is individually cognizable, so when we put them together we think we form a concept about something: but as Russel showed, it's a cognitively empty utterance: nothing was ever being cognized about it at all (despite the mistaken feeling that there was cognitive content: the cognizer was instead cognizing something else, and the utterance [the reference] didn't match up with what was being cognized [the referent]).

I think this mistake happens a lot, so questioning cognizability is an important objection.

Furthermore, a skeptic might be able to argue, "not only is that non-cognitive for me (your utterance), but I doubt that it's cognitive for you: otherwise you would be able to make it cognitive for me by explaining it."

I don't know if I'm to that point yet, but if we analyze whatever future attempts you make to make some of these utterances cognizable, I may make the accusation (or may not, we will have to see).

 

[Meow Mix]

@Rise

Regarding omnipotence, logic, and the aseity-sovereignty paradox.

If God is subject to something that is not under his control then he is not all powerful.
If there is a law of logic that exists above him then he’s not all powerful.
Omnipotence with limits is not omnipotence by definition.

But this is precisely why omnipotence is defined by philosophers (including theologian philosophers) to include logical limits; that is what omnipotence means because saying there are no logical limits is a cognitively empty utterance (and for battling that part out, I refer to the cognitivity post).

First (we'll get to omnipotence and cognitivity later), let me begin with a quote from Plantinga (paragraph format added for readability):

"Now suppose we return to the question whether our concepts apply to God. It is a piece of sheer confusion to say that there is such a person as God, but none of our concepts apply to him. If our concepts do not apply to God, then he does not have such properties as wisdom, being almighty and being the creator of the heavens and the earth.

Our concept of wisdom applies to a being if that being is wise; so a being to whom this concept did not apply would not be wise, whatever else it might be. If, therefore, our concepts do not apply to God, then our concepts of being loving, almighty, wise, creator and Redeemer do not apply to him, in which case he is not loving, almighty, wise, a creator or a Redeemer. He won't have any of the properties Christians ascribe to him.

In fact he won't have any of the properties of which we have concepts. He will not have such properties as self-identity, existence, and being either a material object or an immaterial object, these being properties of which we have concepts. Indeed, he won't have the property of being the referent of the term 'God,' or any other term; our concept being the referent of a term does not apply to him.

The fact is this being won't have any properties at all, since our concept of having at least one property does not apply to him. But how could there be such a thing? How could there be a being that didn't exist, wasn't self-identical, wasn't either a material object or an immaterial object, didn't have any properties? Does any of this even make marginal sense? It is clearly quite impossible that there be a thing to which none of our concepts apply."

We should be able to apply concepts to God in the first place, otherwise we can't say things at all like "God is omnipotent" or even "God is God," or "God is the referent of this sentence." God has properties that we refer to. But what is the significance of having properties? I will again let Plantinga explain:

"If God were distinct from such properties as wisdom, goodness and power but nonetheless had these properties, then he would be dependent on them. He would be dependent on them in a dual way. First, if, as Aquinas thinks, these properties are essential to him, then it is not possible that he should have existed and they not be 'in' him. But if they had not existed, they could not have been in him. Therefore he would not have existed if they had not. This connection between his existence and theirs, furthermore, is necessary; it is not due to his will and it is not within his power to abrogate it. That it holds is not up to him or within his control. He is obliged simply to put up with it. No doubt he wouldn't mind being thus constrained, but that is not the point. The point is that he would be dependent upon something else for his existence, and dependent in a way outside his control and beyond his power to alter; this runs counter to his aseity.

Secondly, under the envisaged conditions God would be dependent upon these properties for his character. He is, for example, wise. But then if there had been no such thing as wisdom, he would not have been wise. He is thus dependent upon these properties for his being the way he is, for being what he is like. And again he didn't bring it about that he is thus dependent; this dependence is not a result of his creative activity; and there is nothing he can do to change or overcome it. If he had properties and a nature distinct from him, then he would exist and display the character he does display because of a relation in which he stands to something other than himself. And this doesn't fit with his existence a se."

So, God not having properties is nonsense; while God having properties makes God dependent.

And so we come to the aseity-sovereignty paradox: could God have decided His own properties?

The answer can't be "yes" because that would be putting the cart before the horse. For God to have decided His own properties, He would have already had to have had properties: for instance, the power to perform property-forming, and the knowledge of how (and what possibilities there are). But if God already had to have properties in order to cause His own properties, it's clear that God would have at least had a set of primordial properties to even attempt to do so that were outside of God's control as described by Plantinga. That makes God dependent on these primordial properties, and being dependent on them means that something about them transcends God. (The alternative is to say that God is identical to his properties rather than possessing properties -- divine simplicity -- but this is just so much incoherent nonsense as seen from the first Plantinga quote).

What does it mean for "something about" God's properties to transcend God? Well, those properties have to be what they are (they are self-identical), and they aren't what they are not (corollaries of self-identity); and God Himself must be God (more self-identity): logic is transcendental to God, does not come forth from God's creative activity, God is subject to it beyond God's control, etc.

By "logic" I do not mean the practice of thinking about logic (the reference), I mean the essence of limitation itself, which is the referent of logic. Logic does not require minds thinking about it to exist (and I will come back to this in the minor topics when you mention things about math requiring minds to exist, that makes the same equivocation between math the thinking process and math the referent (which is really just extended logic, which is really just consequences of limitation).

So in summation, God has properties, God is dependent on those properties, and so God is dependent on logic, and so logic is transcendental and distinct from God. This is not a problem for theism: theists are free to accept that God has a nature (as Plantinga does) quite happily.

FOOTNOTE ABOUT OMNIPOTENCE AND LOGICAL LIMITATION:

I'll close out with Harry Frankfurt on why proposing omnipotence without logical limits is non-cognitive. He is referencing Descartes for context:

Now a person's assertion that there is something he cannot understand is often entirely comprehensible, and there may be quite good evidence that it is true. In the present instance, however, the assertion is peculiar and problematical. That there is a deity with infinite power is supposed by Descartes to entail the possibility of what is logically impossible. But if it must entail this, then the assertion that God has infinite (and hence unintelligible) power seems itself unintelligible. For it appears that no coherent meaning can be assigned to the notion of an infinitely powerful being as Descartes employs it -- that is, to the notion of a being for whom the logically impossible is possible. And if this is so, then it is no more possible for us to know or to believe that God has infinite power than it is, according to Descartes, for us to understand that power. If we cannot understand "infinite power," we also cannot understand and hence cannot believe or know the proposition that God's power is infinite."

Now, Frankfurt wrote this a long time ago and didn't use modern nomenclature. What he's saying is that a speaker can't even claim that omnipotence doesn't have logical limits without just uttering so much noncognitive nonsense: they're not forming a picture of something in their mind, they aren't communicating anything, they might as well be talking about slithey toves gimbling in wabes: not only does their listener have no meaning imparted to them, the speaker themselves never had any meaning to impart: they just made some empty utterances.

Having no logical limitations on omnipotence is the same as, for instance, saying God can create a rock so heavy He can't lift it (which is really saying "there is an irresistible force and an immovable object at the same time and in the same respect"), but no speaker actually cognizes what this utterance is even saying in aggregated (they can only cognize pieces of it; and that understanding vanishes when completed).

You might think, "well, just because we can't understand it doesn't mean it can't be the case," but the response to that is there's no "it" to understand, and no meaning to "it" when you utter it.

But from a philosophical standpoint you have no basis for assuming logic is transcendentally true without God's nature being that which makes it transcendentally true.

Nontheists are perfectly fine with assuming logic is transcendentally true for two reasons:

One, it is self-evident and incorrigible. Attempting to surmise its absence only entails its presence. (The absence of logic = the absence of logic, and so by reductio ad absurdum, there must still be logic!)

Two, all of our worldviews entail brute assumptions: for instance we each brutely assume that our cognitive faculties are geared towards the truth (that they are capable of parsing truth from falsity), because we can't justify this assumption under any worldview without already holding the assumption.

Yes, even theists: if the theist tries to say God gives them this justification, they first had to have examined that claim and decided it was true, etc. Both theists and nontheists are in the same exact boat when it comes to some axioms like this (that our cognitive faculties work, that logic is incorrigible and transcendental, etc.)

 

[Meow Mix]

@Rise

Regarding God as being the source of life and love. This isn't cognitive to me, and so I put the post on cognitivity first in this series. Allow me to help explain why it isn't cognitive to me, however.

I already told you why according to the Bible. God is the source of love. To be disconnected from that necessarily results in a lack of love which we call evil.

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You don’t need a physical law to get death and non-love (ie. evil). It is the logically necessary and unavoidable absence of God’s nature (life and love) in a situation.

God is often ascribed properties that sound similar to properties that we humans experience, but it often soon becomes clear that the theist means something completely different. For instance, I know what "love" is. I love my dad, I love my friends, I have felt romantic love, I love you as a fellow human being (indeed, even just as a fellow sentient and sapient being, I'm not human-centric), and so on.

But what does it mean to be a "source of love?" Clearly this is supposed to mean something other than what humans do when they impart love to one another by way of showing affection, or thinking about someone with a smile, or anything like this. But it isn't really clear to me exactly what.

Sometimes, theists try to make an argument by way of analogy. We might say that just as a dog is good in proportion to their nature as a dog, and a human is good in proportion to their nature as a human, that God is perfectly and infinitely good. But this analogical approach is doomed to failure, and this is why:

We have non-analogical knowledge of the nature of dogs to impart some meaning to what we're saying if we say dogs can be good in proportion to being dogs. We have no such knowledge of the nature of God to impart some meaning to what we're saying when we say "God has goodness in proportion to His nature as God." We might as well not be using the term "goodness" at all since we're uttering about something that isn't at all like a dog's goodness or a human's goodness.

To quote George H. Smith,

If the Christian God is unknowable and completely different in kind from finite existence, we can have no idea of what it means to ascribe a positive quality to his nature--analogically or otherwise--because we have no knowledge of that nature. To say that an "unie" possesses wisdom in proportion to its nature--while stipulating that such wisdom is different in kind from man's wisdom and that the nature of an "unie" is unknowable--contributes nothing to our understanding of "unie" or to the meaning of attributes when applied to an "unie."

And so it is with the Christian God. We might just as well claim that God is "yellow" or "slimely," while stipulating, of course, that these qualities do not mean the same when applied to God as when applied to man, and that God possesses them in a mode appropriate to his infinite nature.

As long as the Christian God remains in the realm of the unknowable, as long as he is totally different in kind from anything with which we have experience, we can never meaningfully ascribe positive qualities to God. To say that God is "good" or "wise" is to say nothing more than some unknowable being possesses some unknown qualities in an unknowable way.

Now, I think Mr. Smith goes too far: we can ascribe properties if they're in cognizable contexts. If God is wise, then God is wise. That's not a problem. The problem arises when we use these terms but mean something different than we normally mean when we say them, and do so in proportion to an unfathomable nature. "God is wise" is okay, but "God is wise, but not like humans are wise; He is wise in proportion to His nature as God" is not okay: it's a pile of noncognitive nonsense.

"God knows more than humans do" is okay, and "God doesn't believe any false propositions, and only believes true propositions" is also okay: these are all things that we can understand and impart meaning. We can even conceive of what omniscience is if we say it is something like "God knows all things that are possible to know, and unfailingly believes only true propositions while believing no false propositions." That's all well and good because it's all in cognizable terms: we know what it means not to believe a false proposition, or to believe a true one; and we can abstract what it means to know all of them. So we're not saying here that we can't ascribe any properties to God, or that we can only ascribe properties that are in the same scope as humans' properties. What is being said is that some properties people try to ascribe to God are not so cognitive.

So what does it mean for God to be "the source of life?" What does "life" mean here? If it means anything other than what we usually mean (things are alive if they seek homeostasis, if they respond to stimuli, some list of properties like this that we vaguely understand with a few hiccups [such as, "are viruses alive?"]), then there is a problem: nothing is being communicated by the statement.

We could try to say something like "life is that property without which there is death," but we're just painting ourselves into a circular corner at that point (what is death? "that quality which exists in the absence of life," this gets us nowhere).

Same thing with "love," clearly you're not saying God is the source of "love" in the same context that we normally speak about when we talk about love, so what is it? What's being said?

Not only do I have to know what you mean by "life" and "love" for this to approach cognizability, I have to know what it means to "be the source of" these things. You tried to use an analogy like electricity, but again, analogy is doomed to failure without understanding the nature of the analogue. Are "life" and "love" some kind of property like energy that literally funnel into things? For instance, imagine that a Platonist says that the Platonic triangle is the source of triangularity: does that make any cognitive sense to you at all? Wouldn't you need to know what they even mean by that? (Because I don't know what they mean by that, either).

You are operating out of a false premise that God needs to give humans power over the laws of the universe for death and evil (lack of love) to exist.

So we come to my next question on this topic: are you or are you not saying that humans changed/had power over the very laws of physics?

Let me try to think about how to put forward my confusion to you.

You say that physical suffering exists because humans aren't connected to God's pipeline of life and love, whatever that means. I'll pretend it has meaning for a minute.

Humans suffer physically because of the laws of physics. My first question is, does this mean that being disconnected from life/love changes the laws of physics? Are the laws of physics that we currently observed exactly equivalent to "being disconnected?"

For instance, would God changing the gravitational constant be somehow "reconnecting" us to life/love? I ask because it seems like an omnipotent God could change the gravitational constant. Do you believe God can increase the gravitational constant if He likes?

You might perceive where I'm going with this: if humans suffer because of the laws of physics, and God can change the laws of physics per omnipotence, but you say that suffering exists because of "being disconnected from life/love," then it follows that you're saying the laws of physics are a consequence of being connected or disconnected from life/love, which would mean that God can't change the laws of physics (otherwise he would be messing with our connection to life/love, whatever that means). Can you see how this is kind of an incoherent mess as it stands right now?

If God can change the laws of physics, then why can't God change the laws of physics to disallow physical suffering (which is absolutely logically possible to do)?

It seems like your theodicy puts you between a rock and a hard place: either God can't alter physics, or God is still culpable for what physics does to our bodies.

 

[Rise]

I think this format is a good idea.

@Rise

I will begin with the topic of non-cognitivity, because it will be important to have this one squashed for resolving later instances.



First: It would be impossible to identify "what, exactly, logically, you think is wrong with it" with a noncognitive utterance.

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You couldn't point out where in my utterance a logical problem exists because that ignores the fundamental nature of the objection: how could you do this if you aren't sure what it means to be brillig, or for toves to be slithey (or what toves are)? You can infer that "brillig" and "slithey" are adjectives, and you can infer that "toves" and "wabe" are nouns, but other than that there's no cognitive substance for you to note logical problems from.

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Just because a word appears familiar doesn't mean that it's cognitive. For instance, I could say that slithey toves purple their way through wabes; but it would be clear from the context that I don't mean "purple" in the way that we normally mean it: though I used a familiar word, I still haven't imparted any sort of cognitive meaning to you from the utterance.

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My main point here is that responding to objections of non-cognitivity with "that's the fallacy of appeal to incredulity, you have to point out what's specifically wrong with my utterance" are not good objections by the very nature of what non-cognitivity even means. It's actually on the utterer to ensure that the noises or utterances they make impart some meaning, and so become communication.

Additionally, it's possible for a person to fully believe that an utterance they're making is cognitive when it may not be. A good example of this is Frege and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica and the assertion that (here comes the utterance) "there is a set of all sets which do not contain themselves." Every word in that utterance is individually cognizable, so when we put them together we think we form a concept about something: but as Russel showed, it's a cognitively empty utterance: nothing was ever being cognized about it at all (despite the mistaken feeling that there was cognitive content: the cognizer was instead cognizing something else, and the utterance [the reference] didn't match up with what was being cognized [the referent]).

I think this mistake happens a lot, so questioning cognizability is an important objection.

Furthermore, a skeptic might be able to argue, "not only is that non-cognitive for me (your utterance), but I doubt that it's cognitive for you: otherwise you would be able to make it cognitive for me by explaining it."

There are three reasons why your argument is wrong:


1. You just refuted your own argument.

You said you couldn't explain why a nonsense statement made no sense - but then you go on to explain exactly and logically why your own example of nonsense doesn't make sense and what would need to be explained in order for it to make sense.

Proving what I said is true: That if a statement really is just nonsense then you should be able to logically identify why either:
a) You aren't given enough information for it to make sense.
b) Why it is logically incoherent.
c) What terms and concepts you need defined.

In the parts I quoted of yours you never gave any reasons why you thought my arguments lacked adequate information, or what terms needed to be defined, or what exactly you didn't understand. You didn't ask for clarification of any kind.


2. You didn't state it was merely your opinion that it made no sense, or state that you personally couldn't understand it, but you stated as a claim to fact that you thought the fault rested with my statements not making sense.

Because you made a claim that my post was at fault, the onus is on you to provide proof for your claim by giving valid logical reasons why my post was at fault of not making sense as opposed to merely being your fault for not understanding it.

The burden of proof is on you as the one making the claim to support why your claim is true.
Otherwise you are just expressing your opinion, not a fact.

The fundamental error with your approach in this case is that you are assuming your ability to understand something is the determiner of whether or not it is intelligible or not. It might be the determiner of whether or not it's intelligible to you personally but it's not the determiner of whether or not their argument made sense from an objective standpoint.

The later can only be determined by giving valid logical reasons for why we should conclude that to be the case.

That is why it becomes a fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity or argument by assertion. Because it is a claim without support.
If you gave valid reasons for why my post didn't make objective sense then it wouldn't be a fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity.


3. I believe you are applying a double standard that you would not accept for people to do to your posts.

Imagine if I responded to your thousands of words arguing against the cosmological argument, wherein you amply reference cosmological physics, by saying simply:
"That's just a bunch of nonsensical mumbo jumbo. It means nothing. You aren't saying anything. You probably don't even know what you're saying".

That would be a fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity and argument by assertion because my ability to understand what you are saying doesn't determine whether or not what you are saying makes objective sense.

The onus would be on me to give reasons why your post doesn't make sense so you can either explain why I am in error or you can correct the legitimate faults in your post.

For instance, if I were to say to you, "'Twas brillig this last Tuesday, and the slithey toves were gyring and gimbling in the wabe," you would be able to respond to me with "I'm not sure that what you just said is cognitive." It would be on me to convey meaning to you at that point.

You would merely be expressing your opinion at that point, and not a statement of fact.

But the way you expressed it now is not even how you did originally.
Originally you tried to claim as a fact that there was something cognitively wrong with my post, without giving any supporting reasons to justify your claim.

It was not merely an expression that you personally didn't understand it, and asking for clarification of something specific.

While this post is limited to non-cognitivity, I will connect it to one of the other posts coming up: for instance, if you tell me that "God is the source of life," that doesn't impart any cognitive meaning to me. I know that "being a source" is a property related to impartation in some way, I know some contexts of the word "life," but it's clear from the context of how you're making this utterance that you mean something different than we normally mean by these terms: so, in the absence of sufficient clarification of these meanings, nothing at all has been communicated to me other than "God does an unknown thing in an unknown way," just like slithey toves gimbling in wabes is saying "unknown things do unknown actions in unknown ways."

The responsibility is yours to ask for clarification if you need it. You cannot assume my argument makes no sense just because you don't understand it. If you can't give specific reasons why it doesn't make sense then you have no logical basis for claiming it doesn't.

I have given you clarification on my terms when you have asked for it. And I am happy to do so.

What you cannot do is just throw up your hands, say you don't understand, and start claiming my argument must be at fault because you don't understand it - without giving any reasons why we should think my post was at fault.

 

[Meow Mix]

@Rise

Regarding humans' union with God.

Those in union with God would by definition only act perfectly loving.

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If Adam and Eve were without sin prior to the fall, they would have been acting with perfect love towards others - meaning there would be no opportunity for emotional pain to happen.

This doesn't seem logically congruent with (per the Christian worldview) Adam and Eve choosing to disconnect from God. Specifically, I had said:

You say that it will not be possible to have things like unrequited love, or broken friendships, and this sort of thing: does this mean humans will always choose perfectly morally correctly in their interactions with one another?

And you responded with "Those in union with God would by definition only act perfectly loving."

I asked:

Why couldn't they have started out with this sort of moral perfection?

And you responded with "They did. That’s the whole point of redemption. Jesus came to restore what we lost; which will culminate at the end of the age with a return to union with God and a restoration of eden-like conditions on earth. They made the choice to leave union with God."

This seems contradictory to me. If they were in a state of union where they would make perfect moral choices that could never lead to things like broken friendship, then how did they "break their friendship" (using this colloquially) with God?

Why would they be unable to disconnect from one another (broken friendship) but able to disconnect from God? Doesn't this fly in the face of saying that they were capable of infinitely making loving choices? Is it still loving of God to disconnect from God?

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Actually, I thought I had more to say here, but they're all variations of this confusion, so I shall leave this one here.