Evil = Absence of Good => A Grave Error?
I think that some of the modern, and perhaps not so modern, theological efforts to define evil in terms of goodness (as if evil was nothing but not good) are one of the most profound theological mistakes ever made. This definition of evil is a subversive reification - attempting to attribute existence to an abstraction, thereby denying the independent reality of evil.
Likewise, when we treat darkness as the absence of light we are reifying our concept of darkness. For clearly the experience of darkness isn't simply the experience of not-light, but a different experience, which must be defined in-itself, and not by reference to another. Spinoza makes this point quite well.
But what is the problem with this error, and why is it so serious? Because it leads to incoherence, and quite possibly blasphemy. If evil is the absence of good and evil exists, then God cannot be omnipresent, because God is good. So where evil exists, God is not, ie He's not omnipresent. We could surely deny that evil really exists, but that would be equally problematic. Another solution would be to say that in-so-far as something exists, it is good, whereas evil is only in-so-far as the thing doesn't exist. But that is self-contradictory not to mention that it is yet another reification.
The other issue is that it becomes incoherent who created evil. For clearly Satan could not have brought forth evil unless evil already existed, and was, as it were, dormant, awaiting to be actualised. But, if evil is the absence of good, neither could God have created evil. In fact, it gets worse! Evil would be uncreated, which would lead to a position of ditheism, totally antithetical to Christian theology.
The other major problem is that it becomes possible to put into question God's goodness, but that is incoherent for reasons I will illustrate later.
So it must be that when we think of evil as the opposite of good, we certainly don't mean they are opposites in a logical sense. But rather opposite as in two alternatives.
Both evil and good seem to be defined with reference to God's Law. But God is the Creator of the Law - therefore the real God must be beyond good and evil - truly a transcendent God! So when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the question of whether it was good or evil to do so didn't come up - it was a suspension of the ethical, for God is higher than the Law.
Once this is affirmed, then God becomes the Creator of the good and of the evil, and Lord over both. It is finally possible to affirm God's omnipresence - for God is Lord over both good and evil. There is also no question of ditheism anymore. And finally, the debates regarding whether God is good or evil are rendered incoherent. God cannot be judged, because all judgements (with regards to good and evil) are made by the Law, but God is higher than the Law!
Likewise, when we treat darkness as the absence of light we are reifying our concept of darkness. For clearly the experience of darkness isn't simply the experience of not-light, but a different experience, which must be defined in-itself, and not by reference to another. Spinoza makes this point quite well.
But what is the problem with this error, and why is it so serious? Because it leads to incoherence, and quite possibly blasphemy. If evil is the absence of good and evil exists, then God cannot be omnipresent, because God is good. So where evil exists, God is not, ie He's not omnipresent. We could surely deny that evil really exists, but that would be equally problematic. Another solution would be to say that in-so-far as something exists, it is good, whereas evil is only in-so-far as the thing doesn't exist. But that is self-contradictory not to mention that it is yet another reification.
The other issue is that it becomes incoherent who created evil. For clearly Satan could not have brought forth evil unless evil already existed, and was, as it were, dormant, awaiting to be actualised. But, if evil is the absence of good, neither could God have created evil. In fact, it gets worse! Evil would be uncreated, which would lead to a position of ditheism, totally antithetical to Christian theology.
The other major problem is that it becomes possible to put into question God's goodness, but that is incoherent for reasons I will illustrate later.
So it must be that when we think of evil as the opposite of good, we certainly don't mean they are opposites in a logical sense. But rather opposite as in two alternatives.
Both evil and good seem to be defined with reference to God's Law. But God is the Creator of the Law - therefore the real God must be beyond good and evil - truly a transcendent God! So when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the question of whether it was good or evil to do so didn't come up - it was a suspension of the ethical, for God is higher than the Law.
Once this is affirmed, then God becomes the Creator of the good and of the evil, and Lord over both. It is finally possible to affirm God's omnipresence - for God is Lord over both good and evil. There is also no question of ditheism anymore. And finally, the debates regarding whether God is good or evil are rendered incoherent. God cannot be judged, because all judgements (with regards to good and evil) are made by the Law, but God is higher than the Law!
Isaiah 45:7:I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things
Comments (183)
Denying an independent reality of evil is quite a Christian thing; Augustine denied it, and many others. But I understand what you are trying to say though . But hasn't many Christians tried to define it thus: Good=being, evil=non-being?
You do know that Spinoza denied the reality of evil?
If we do that, then we end up in the conundrum of whether evil exists. If evil is non-being, then evil doesn't exist. So all your experience of evil must be illusory. Furthermore, hell must not exist, since hell is full of evil, and evil is just non-being.
I don't think so. Regardless, I was referring to his methodological proceeding of defining everything in-itself rather than through another.
Yes, exactly! And that fits perfectly with my conception of evil and good being defined in-themselves, and ultimately in relation to the Law (thus, as Spinoza says, having no ultimate reality in and of themselves).
No, he didn't say that, he just said they have no independent existence, not that they have no existence whatsoever. Christians know that good and evil are defined in relationship to God's Law, and thus also have no independent existence apart from the Law.
The fact that the damned and the saved encounter the same thing is a necessity, for God is omnipresent isn't He? How could the damned escape God?! Is God not stronger than any attempt to escape Him? Isn't that what his omnipresence means?
I think the problem with a lot of modern (and not so modern) theology is that it doesn't take the transcendence of God seriously enough.
That's basically saying that they can't be defined in-themselves. They need to be defined in relation to, for example, the Law - or at any rate, something other than themselves. His point is that a thing is not evil in-itself, but rather in its relationship with other things. So it really is an existential fact that:
But that goodness isn't an in-itself of music but comes from the interrelationship of melancholy and music.
Nietzsche was a failed Spinozist, since he takes the fact that evil and good have no independent existence as meaning that they have no existence whatsoever, which Spinoza would vehemently deny.
Nietzsche felt Spinoza was a kindred spirit at times, but I think that's merely an impression. If you look at their characters and what they wrote, it becomes clear. Spinoza was a virtue ethicist, Nietzsche an immoralist :P
I know. But if you ask Berdyaev about what Nietzsche was, he would say (in fact he did say this) that Nietzsche was one of the greatest MORALISTS of all time...
No, because I don't think we can straight-jacket how God perceives. God can be angry, vengeful, jealous, distant as well as loving, kind, close to us, etc.
Can we see red and white in the same place at the same time?
Notice that the fact we can't doesn't tell us that white = the absence of red :P
Quoting Lone Wolf
Not really, because good and evil are opposites, just not in a logical sense where one is the absence of the other (and just that). They're opposites like red and white are opposites (as colors, when one is present the other must be absent but the other is not JUST the absence of the former).
No. Red has it's own distinct light wave length. While we might think we are seeing them combined, they are in fact only what we think we see, and they are not truly combined at all. It is merely our lack of ability to discern between them.
Quoting Agustino
If X is not Y, then X must be absence of Y, because Y is not in X. BTW, white light doesn't exist. It is merely a illusion, because has many colors near each other.
Agreed, but X isn't JUST the absence of Y.
Not only must it not be loving, kind, etc. but it must be the opposite of those. There's a subtle difference there. I can be unloving for example, without being hateful and resentful. That's precisely why evil (injustice, malice, etc.) isn't merely the absence of good, but rather its opposite.
What makes it the opposite? What does opposite really mean?
Opposite means contrary to it. If love is what brings people together, then its opposite isn't the mere absence of love, but rather hate, that which pushes people apart.
I agree. I've always found the claim that evil is the privation of the good to be arbitrary. It's just axiomatically asserted with a few paltry examples. Why couldn't evil be real and goodness the absence of it? Why couldn't there be a Form of Evil as the one true reality instead of a Form of the Good?
Quoting Agustino
Perhaps you have solved the dilemma (I think that depends on how a lot of the terms you used are defined), but you've failed to provide any compelling reason to worship this God. Why worship a God who deliberately creates evil? Just as we wouldn't follow or admire a human being who caused evil, so we shouldn't do the same of God. It would be morally obligatory to oppose such a being.
Yes, very good question. I have not understood that either. How could a God that is supposed to be good produce evil? How can a good tree produce bad fruit?
That's like asking why love pulls people together. It's just it's nature.
But the true opposite isn't a complete absence, that's precisely my point. The complete absence of that which pulls people together doesn't push them apart also, this is an important point.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Selfishness, pride, etc.?
I suggest that "evil" isn't well-defined. It isn't possible to discuss something without a good definition.
It sounds to me as if you're re-ifying evil.
Look, there are seriously misguided and lost people, and typically then have a malicious tendency. Some of them are dangerous &/or harmful to others.
That isn't "evil". It's just misguided, lost, malicious &/or dangerous people.
Michael Ossipoff.
This is a philosophy of religion discussion... it's not placed in Ethics this topic, you know...
Call it what you want. My answer is still valid.
When I say that this philosophy-of-religion discussion is using a made-up term without a meaning ("evil"), I'm validly participating in this discussion of philosophy-of-religion.
P.s. At no extra charge, I'll offer an answer to why there is "evil" in this world:
We were all born in the Land of the Lost.
I suggest that, consistent with that, could be some really messed up conduct or ours in previous lives, whereby we really messed-up our lives..
We discussed reincarnation at a discussion-thread by that name.
You can't very well object to an explanation involving reincarnation, in a philosophy-of-religion discussion. Yes, different people believe differently, but some of you have a difficult time explaining the sorry state of our societal-world. Reincarnation neatly explains our birth in a world such as this.
Michael Ossipoff
For the same reason that good isn't just the absence of evil either :P . The fallacy there is that two different aspects of reality cannot be defined in terms of each other, but must rather be defined in-themselves. The experience of evil, is different than the experience of good. So defining evil in relation to good is just as false as defining good in relation to evil. It would mean to reify it.
Quoting Thorongil
What's the problem with this? God is God, He's not a human being. I find this highly incoherent, trying to judge God by the very Law (which you call morality and is written in everyone's heart) that God Himself has created :s Human beings, and those under the Law can be judged by the Law, but God? That's silly - it is blasphemy, treating God as one of your fellow creatures that you can judge. God is His own justification, He is above good and evil. How could anything God does be evil, ie against the Law, when God is the Creator of the Law and supreme over it? God ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Can you imagine being Abraham, and approaching Mount Moriah, knowing that you have to pull that knife and thrust it into your son's neck?! That seems horrifying to us, and it is. It is completely against the moral law that is written in our hearts. But God is above the Law. That is why Abraham was right to have faith in God, believing both that he will kill Isaac, and that Isaac will live - even though it was absurd. For nothing is impossible for God.
Quoting Thorongil
No it wouldn't. This is precisely the difference between creature and Creator. I have no right to destroy God's creation, for it is God's, not mine. But God has a right to destroy all of creation if He so desires, for it is His. I don't understand why so many people insist that God must be an anthropomorphism of the human :s Why make out of God a creature like us? :s
As for why I admire God, it is precisely because He is transcendent, and thus beyond Good and Evil - that He is Lord over all of Creation, unbounded by anything, entirely free, and He doesn't owe us anything. Many people have this tendency to have expectations from God, but God doesn't owe a creature anything. He decides what to do with His Creation, for it is His. No human judgement can comprehend God. Once someone gets this, there is a profound humility towards God that is felt, as well as acceptance of life as it is. It is much like the end of Job's story. Job cries to God and wrestles with Him, until God booms to him that he has no right to question His creation to begin with!
He has created such beautiful things as the stars in the heavens, the galaxies, each of the animals, the angels, the demons, and everything that exists. Job should be grateful even that he had the chance to see the rest of creation, even if for a single second. And behold Job is protesting because he is suffering. So what? Who is he to have expectations of God and demand that life be as he wants it to be? Is he greater than God to judge God? It is God's right as His Creator to allow anything to happen to him. Job has no right to demand something out of God. How can God owe any man anything?!
How about the muslim terrorists then like those who flew into world trade center or ISIS today? They would love hearing what you said here and say that this is exactly what they do; God demands them to kill for the sake of faith, and because God is above the Law... I mean, if one is demanded by God to go beyond the moral law, then why blame these terrorists? Perhaps they actually do what God tells them? You see, I am not saying that you are wrong, because I am familiar with this reasoning from Kierkegaard and find it interesting(and I see the same spirit in Nietzsche even if you reject and hate him - perhaps because he doesn't use christian terminology but instead tries to create a new definition of things?) but it is certainly a risk to say that God is above his law and can demand people to do evil things and consider it "good"(though I know that God prevented Abraham from killing Isaac)...
So, once again, what if God wants you and me to destroy creation, using us as tools? Is that then immoral? I mean, you say that God is beyond good and evil but yet that man is to be condemned if he acts "beyond good and evil", if I have understood correctly? But what if God wants us to act beyond good and evil?
Because God doesn't demand them that (therefore this premise would be false)? Human beings are bound by the moral law, and they will be judged by the Law. So if you break the law (remember that Abraham didn't actually break the law), then you'll be judged for breaking the law.
Quoting Beebert
No, the actions wouldn't be considered good. Remember that with Abraham, he didn't believe God was commanding him to do evil, for he believed in his heart that Isaac would live, since God promised him earlier that Isaac would live. It was however a teleological suspension of the ethical, in that Abraham's direct relationship with God was more important than his commitment to the law. The good was his faith, not his actions. So Abraham didn't actually break the law, it was just his readiness to break the Law for the sake of God that was in question - namely his faith.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, exactly, for man is not God.
Quoting Beebert
There is no indication that God wants you to act beyond good and evil, which is for example why He stopped Abraham from killing Isaac. That's also why we're judged by the Law. It was but a test of faith, of bringing Abraham closer to God and making him trust God more than he trusts himself that such was demanded of him. The story and the rest of the Bible though does make it clear that such demands are exceptional, and God doesn't actually intend any creature to do evil unto another.
Suppose a child wants to play video-games. If he really wants to, his dad might allow him to. But who says that that dad will or should ensure that he always wins? The variety of outcomes is part of the game.
But, despite the societally messed-up nature of some worlds (such as ours), God has given us better than that.:
Let me quote from a song by the Byrds, entitled "5D":
"I opened my heart to the whole universe, and found it was loving."
(Surely, by "universe", they're referring to Reality, all that is.)
Yes we live in a societally messed-up world, but the larger Reality is good.
It seems to me that both Atheists (Atheists are always Fundamentalists) and many Theists seem to speak of God as an element of metaphysics. God isn't an element of metaphysics. We're talking about a Principle of Good that'sabove metaphysics.
Metaphysics is about what is. But we're talking about a Principle of Good, above metaphysics. ...the reason why what is, is as good as it is.
It isn't something provable. It's a feeling of gratitude that some people have, for the goodness of what is.
It isn't something to argue about or debate.
I debate metaphysics, not religion.
Michael Ossipoff
True, the law wasn't broken by Abraham, and God prevented it. But why? Isn't the answer to that also because GOD never breaks this law? He stands above it, but he doesn't break it.
Well God prevented Abraham, not Himself, from breaking the Law in that case.
Quoting Beebert
I don't think it is coherent to say that God breaks the Law, for God simply is His own justification, so God doing evil, or breaking the Law, etc. is incoherent.
I agree with you, it is probably a correct interpretation and I would hold the same view, but still: The terrorists would probably also like this interpretation and use it to their advantage... They would probably say that they hear God's voice, perhaps even that he communicates with them as directly as he did with Abraham, that this relationship is more important than their commitment to the law and therefore... They might say "I break the Law and destroy the World Trade Center for the sake of God - namely my faith!"
By the Law here, do you mean how we have treated our neighbour, mainly if we have clothed the naked and visited the sick and helped the homeless etc? Or do you mean if we have followed the 613 commands of the Torah?
...or that God would order, condone and even assist Joshua's (alleged) massacres in Canaan?
(Actually, archaeological evidence suggests that the Israelites gradually and peacefully assimilated in Canaan, and that their supposed conquest of Canaan never happened.)
Michael Ossipoff
Well again, as I said before, human beings will be judged by the Law, and are in fact bound by the Law. So if they do evil, then they are to be judged for it. Remember that Abraham didn't actually do evil, if he were to have done it, he would have been judged for it. So the terrorists in question will be judged since they are under the Law - they are not God. And the fact that they think they are God, and are thus above the Law is actually blasphemy.
Quoting Beebert
Both really, BUT some of those 613 commands of the Torah are particular commandments to the Jewish people, not to everyone else. Noahide Laws + 10 Commandments (for Christians) form the "core" of the morality of everyone else.
Yes >:) - He'd say "why not?!".
[hide="Reveal"](just joking LOL >:O )[/hide]
Personally I find Spinoza's ontological argument for Substance valid if we were to transfer it to God. But what do you think of this Catholic theologian:
Well, so if I asked God; "Why do you exist?", would he then answer "Well... In a sense I don't actually"? :P Is that really an answer? xD
No, for He is beyond Being and Non-Being. Being beyond both, He cannot fall under either. If you want it, God exists more real-ly than Being, for He is not constrained by Non-Being.
The question of why is incoherent though. Why always refers to an external reason for something, a cause of its existence. But God is by definition Uncaused, and there can be no external reason for His existence.
The question is self-refuting (incoherent) because in asking the question you presuppose that the uncaused thing has a cause, and therefore it is not uncaused.
Every question you ask makes at least one presupposition. Is jealousy yellow? Presupposes that "yellow" could be a trait of jealousy. Are you still beating your wife? presupposes there was a time when you were beating your wife.
Of course, because it is fundamentally ungraspable, it is beyond logic and the intellect.
I think you're are falling for a bit of red-herring in your metaphysical reasoning. The acosmist's God is already excluded from the world's evil by it's definition. If you are dealing with Spinoza's or maybe even Aquinas' God (if we take the non-being of God and address it logically), the notion God must be evil because of omnipresence is rejected outright. God's omnipresence is not presence qua the world, it's otherworldly presence with the world.
The presence of worldly evil just doesn't challenge goodness of an otherworldly God. In Spinoza case, for example, the evil of the illusionary finite world cannot undermine the goodness of the Real (infinite, or "otherworldly" ) of God.
Still, I think there is a worse misunderstanding. Most of the time of I've encountered "evil=absence of good," it is has not been a claim of metaphysical or meta-ethical basis, but rather than expression of how evil outcomes occur if someone doesn't act in good way. It's usually a call to action against letting evil occur by inaction-- "all it takes for evil to flourish is for men [who would like to think they were good] to do nothing."
In that context, both good and evil are actually independently defined, with "the absence of good," that is refusing to act to bring out good outcome, being evil in-itself.
Maybe. I was thinking of Schopenhauer when I made that comment. Happiness, goodness, right: these are negative concepts for him, while suffering, evil, and wrong are positive.
Quoting Agustino
And how did Abraham know it was the voice of God telling him to murder his son? Your claim that God is beyond good and evil doesn't excuse him from commanding the latter. If I were Abraham, I would dismiss the voice as that of a demon.
Quoting Agustino
It's not the fact that God is not a human that is hard to accept, but his deliberately creating and/or commanding evil. You still haven't really explained why I should worship a God who does that.
Quoting Agustino
What's so admirable about that?
Quoting Agustino
And, apparently, very many ugly and repugnant things.
Quoting Agustino
There is a rank absurdity in the idea that God endows human beings with the natural law and expects them to follow it, but who then proceeds to break it himself and berate humans for not understanding why he has done so. What the hell does he expect is going to happen?
It seems contradictory to say that something is defined "in-itself" and that it has no independent existence. You say good and evil have no existence apart form the "Law". This is not to define good and evil "in-themselves" but rather in terms of the "Law". To attempt to define them "in-themselves' would seem to constitute the kind of "subversive reification" you referred to earlier.
You are right. It is.
They have no independent existence, therefore they cannot be defined in-themselves. But then neither can they be defined in terms of each other (since each has no independent existence).
I don't know what experience he had.
Quoting Thorongil
Why not? God is His own standard. How can God be judged by the Law?
Quoting Thorongil
Well I'm tempted to say I would have done the same, but then I don't know exactly what experience Abraham had when God commanded him to do so...
Quoting Thorongil
How can God break the Law? :s If God is His own standard, whatsoever He does is right.
Quoting Thorongil
From your perspective (full of will). I remember in Schopenhauer's 3rd book of the first volume of WWR he describes the denial of the will that is sometimes achieved by a painting of a natural disaster, or of a vast empty desert symbolising death.
Quoting Thorongil
It's the glory of transcendence, of freedom, of infinity - of that which transcends this reality in all ways, but which nevertheless incarnated and came down amongst us to lift us unto Him.
What's so admirable about a God one holds in his pocket, who is just another element inside one's head rather than exceeding one's head?
Quoting Beebert
I don't have much time now, but I basically disagree with this and agree with the Church Fathers.
human life from the perspective of the Dao, we would understand that we
normally view the world through a lens of value judgments -- we see things as
good or bad, desirable or detestable. The cosmos itself possesses none of
these characteristics of value. All values are only human conventions that we
project onto the world. Good and evil are non-natural distinctions that we need
to discard if we are to see the world as it really is."
That's not from the TTC. Sounds more like a commentary - unless you're using a very weird and commented translation.
Quoting Beebert
Warmed over Hume. I prefer Aristotle & Plato.
and planned action. The marks of the Dao are freedom from judgment and
spontaneity"
That's an interpretation of it, not the actual text. The actual text never says that, ALTHOUGH, it is true that the TTC does say that:
§36
Actually, Augustine did say there was animal death before the Fall. But the ancients had different ideas about animals than we do. With the benefit of fields like evolutionary biology, ethology, and so on, we are now able to know that a vast magnitude of seemingly pointless suffering and death occurred before humans came on the scene. Thus, even if the Church Fathers granted that animals died before the Fall, the moral problem of animal suffering and death not only remains, but has grown ever more potent in light of modern scientific developments.
There is one possible explanation that is offered by certain of the Church Fathers, which is that the world, prior to human beings, was corrupted by Satan and his minions, who fell before humans did. CS Lewis and, from what I can tell, von Balthasar, take up this view in modern times.
Quoting Beebert
Very well said. These are questions that I still haven't seen any Christian adequately answer. And it's not that I have ruled out there being good answers to them in advance. I would dearly love to find them and have earnestly searched, but no cigar so far.
Because he gave us the law and, more importantly, expects us to follow it. Imagine if I had a child and told him that it was good to eat vegetables and that he must eat vegetables or else I will punish him, but I then refuse to eat vegetables myself and rebuke the child for questioning why I refuse to do so. That wouldn't endear the child to me, just as God breaking his own moral law doesn't endear him to us. Being omniscient, he would already know this, and so it would appear that God does things that he knows in advance are counterproductive at getting people to believe in him and trust him. For how could you trust a God who says to do one thing and then proceeds to do the exact opposite of that?
Look at what I wrote in my dialogue long ago:
Quoting Agustino
There's that voluntarism rearing its ugly, morally repugnant head again. I would direct you to the following verse:
"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" Isaiah 5:20.
Quoting Agustino
Right, which is the one he gave me. "The cause of a cause is the cause of its effect."
Quoting Agustino
Not sure the relevance of this.
Quoting Agustino
I had no idea I was speaking to this man:
Now I know why @Beebert has been so exasperated. I still love ya' Agustino, but I can't abide by your theology.
I guess explanation is only for physics and metaphysics.
Toward God, the Principle of Good, the good-ness of what is, gratitude is all that's possible or needed.
Michael Ossipoff
"Good-ness" is better. I think we all agree that good intent is felt, and is there.
Michael Ossipoff
You're wrong here. I do not reject the Law, all I do is diminish its sphere of application to creation, not Creator. Good isn't evil and evil isn't good - but those concepts can only be applied to creation (including nature), not to God. You are committing a category error when you apply them to God.
The Law in my conception applies as harshly and with the same iron-like nature as the Law applies in your conception, only that mine is limited to Nature and creation in its application, while yours has been lifted even above God Himself - as if God's creation (the Law) can raise itself above its Creator!
Quoting Thorongil
And was corrupted by the Fall :P
Quoting Thorongil
The relevance of that is that when the effects of sin disappear in the denial of the will, then you see the world aright.
Quoting Thorongil
How quaint that I disagree the most with that man ;)
Quoting Thorongil
>:O But quite the contrary, I always took his side when it came to Calvin.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes, you are a creature, so that is true.
Quoting Thorongil
Your child belongs to God first and foremost, and only then does he or she belong to you. Your reasoning of course fails because you and your child are both creatures under one and the same God, and are therefore on an equal footing. The child can absolutely question you, but you cannot question God. The gap between creature and Creator is of the essence. The relationship parent-child is only analogical with the relationship of man or woman with God. It is fallacious to apply the same kind of reasoning to both of them.
Quoting Thorongil
Yeah, that may be true, if it was possible for God to break his Law in the first place.
As corrupted by the Fall*
Your basic error is to believe that 'evil is real'. That is precisely what 'the doctrine of privation' denies 1.
But in order to make this intelligible, there has to be some understanding of the notion that 'what exists' - i.e. what appears to the senses - is unreal, in some fundamental way. It exists, but it is not what it appears to be. Which means, you have to recognise the difference between what exists, and what is real. Were one to be awoken from the spell of the apparent reality of evil, then it wouldn't appear real to you - in other words, it would lose its hold - because you would know it as mere appearance, and not reality.
It is because you believe that evil is real, that the Devil has purchase. 'Look here, sonny - behold my powers.' Remember the Temptation of Christ - 'all the powers' that He was offered, and so on. And then He said: 'get thee behind me Satan'.
Quoting Agustino
It seems to me that everything we call 'evil' is the work of men (forgive the sexist nomenclature). Where we see evil, certainly we should seek to remedy it, as far as we can. But to believe that it has any true reality, is surely to forego the possibility of liberation, which is 'awakening to the good that has no opposite'.
"A god who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make sure that his creatures understand his intention could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of the truth? Would he not be a cruel god if he possessed the truth and could behold mankind miserably tormenting itself over the truth? But perhaps he is a god of goodness notwithstanding and merely could not express himself more clearly! Did he perhaps lack the intelligence to do so? Or the eloquence? So much the worse! For then he was perhaps also in error as to that which he calls his 'truth', and is himself not so very far from being the 'poor deluded devil'! Must he not then endure almost the torments of Hell to have to see his creatures suffer so, and go on suffering even more through all eternity, for the sake of knowledge of him, and not be able to help and counsel them, except in the manner of a deafand-dumb man making all kinds of ambiguous signs when the most fearful danger is about to fall on his child or his dog? A believer who reaches this oppressive conclusion ought truly to be forgiven if he feels more pity for this suffering god than he does for his 'neighbours' for they are no longer his neighbours if that most solitary and most primeval being is also the most suffering being of all and the one most in need of comfort. All religions exhibit traces of the fact that they owe their origin to an early, immature intellectuality in man they all take astonishingly lightly the duty to tell the truth: they as yet know nothing of a duty of God to be truthful towards mankind and clear in the manner of his communications. On the 'hidden god', and on the reasons for keeping himself thus hidden and never emerging more than half-way into the light of speech, no one has been more eloquent than Pascal a sign that he was never able to calm his mind on this matter: but his voice rings as confidently as if he had at one time sat behind the curtain with this hidden god. He sensed a piece of immorality in the 'deus absconditus'48 and was very fearful and ashamed of admitting it to himself: and thus, like one who is afraid, he talked as loudly as he could.
48. deus absconditus: the "hidden/concealed god."
- Nietzsche, Daybreak aphorism 91
For example he says about the Divine darkeness/the hidden God: "On the 'hidden god', and on the reasons for keeping himself thus hidden and never emerging more than half-way into the light of speech, no one has been more eloquent than Pascal a sign that he was never able to calm his mind on this matter: but his voice rings as confidently as if he had at one time sat behind the curtain with this hidden god. He sensed a piece of immorality in the 'deus absconditus'48 and was very fearful and ashamed of admitting it to himself: and thus, like one who is afraid, he talked as loudly as he could."
The 'divine darkness' is a reference to what is called 'apophatic mysticism', one expression of which is a book called The Cloud of Unknowing, which was written by a Christian monk, and is still in print - it's a perennial title (and one I would recommend). N. would have no way of comprehending or finding his way into that kind of understanding, because what is required is relinquishment of self and inner silence and stillness, which is about as far from Nietzsche as it is possible to get.
There's your problem. The magnificent organising power of the Roman empire congealed around a revolutionary popular religious movement and endowed with a titular authority. Pity the gnostics didn't have more of a look in, in the first place; things might have turned out differently.
(The word 'Jupiter' is derived from the Sanskrit 'Dyaus-Pitar', which means, literally, 'sky father'. That, I'm sure, is what a lot of people believe in (or disbelieve in). And at a certain stage of cultural development that might be a perfectly suitable image - but we have to get beyond that. We've been out there, now, and it's mainly empty space.
Another name for God was the tetragrammaton - YHWH - which has now, regrettably, been phoneticized as 'Yahweh'. The original intention of the tetragrammaton was to convey the unknowability of the divine, because the name could literally not be spoken, it was un-sayable.)
"The magnificent organising power of the Roman empire congealed around a revolutionary popular religious movement and endowed with a titular authority. Pity the gnostics didn't have more of a look in, in the first place; things might have turned out differently."
So, how does this fit into the bible, Where God often seems to be perceived as this Authoritarian ruler?
"(The word 'Jupiter' is derived from the Sanskrit 'Dyaus-Pitar', which means, literally, 'sky father'. That, I'm sure, is what a lot of people believe in (or disbelieve in)."
Even people like those who wrote some of the books of The Old Testament and Saint Paul etc?
Look at this for example. Strawman. Have you actually read the man? I read Pascal's Pensées, and it's nothing of this sort at all. Pascal was writing a work of apologetics, and so people in that day - like many today - say in protest to Christianity, "Oh well, if God actually existed, why doesn't he give a clear and undeniable sign? Why doesn't He speak with us? Where is He?". So naturally Pascal pointed out to what the Bible says - namely that God is hidden, and not obvious. So quite the contrary, their objection is actually in accordance with Christian scriptures and justifies Christianity, rather than condemn it.
Paul was promoting a social-control-system religion, eventually officially codified at Nicea around 300 A.D.
God didn't write the Bible. The Bible was written by some authoritarian men.
If you're tempted to believe the Bible, then look again at the Book of Joshua.
An international conference of Christian scholars concluded that Christ is heavily misquoted in the Bible.
Don't trust doctrinaire authoritarians. Faith in doctrinaire authoritarians is misplaced.
The Catholic Church collected money from my mother, to be prayed into heaven.
Michael Ossipoff
:s
You mentioned the Upanishads. I subscribe to Vedanta, and my metaphysics can be regarded as a version of Vedanta metaphysics, though it doesn't match any of the 3 usual Vedanta versions.
Michael Ossipoff
I'll take that as agreement.
Michael Ossipoff
What's the international conference? And how are they "Christian" scholars if they claim the Bible misquotes Jesus? And how the hell did they establish that the Bible misquotes Jesus? Presumably they have a separate source for what Jesus said with which they compare the Bible no? You're clearly bullshitting us most likely.
Yes.
It was described in a newspaper article. No, I don't believe newspapers to be reliable about everything, but there almost surely really was that conference. There'd be no motive to make it up. It probably took place in 1983. I don't have more information about it. But no, I didn't make it up.
Who says a Christian scholar has to believe everything in the Bible? Because they revere Christ, they critically examined quotes attributed to Christ.
The article was brief, and was a long time ago. I couldn't tell you what the conferees' credentials were, though the article might have briefly mentioned them..
Good question. I was wondering the same thing. Most likely there are mutual contractions among the Bible's quotes of Jesus. If different quotes in the Bible contradict eachother, then at least one of them must be false.
Maybe they compared the post-Nicea Bible to the pre-Nicea Bible.
Not necessarily. Mutually-contradictory quotes would be sufficient to establish false quotes.
But, additionally, I heard that the Council of Nicea threw out parts of the Bible that didn't suit their agenda.
No, I wouldn't make it up.I have no reason to bullshit.
Michael Ossipoff
Michael Ossipoff
Then do you also believe that God told Joshua to perpetrate all those massacres in Canaan?
Michael Ossipoff
Michael Ossipoff
That doesn't sound like God. That sounds like some of those authoritarian authors.
It came from those authors.
Michael Ossipoff
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
"Teacher, teacher the dog really ate my homework! I know I don't have any other evidence, but it was 19:31 and he actually ate it! I don't have more information about it. But no, I didn't make it up!" >:O >:O >:O
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Can you give examples of such quotes? And even if this were so (which by the way it isn't), this wouldn't mean that at least one of them must be false. That would presuppose a dogmatic adherence to the law of noncontradiction, and as it pertains at least to God and the transcendent, this would require some backing.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Again, you're speaking blatant lies here. These are entirely nonfactual claims.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Yes, you do have a reason to bullshit, which is to drive your anti-Church propaganda.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
What re-write? :s
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Yes.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No, that's not what I'm saying.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I doubt those authoritarian sources would have any reason to have God make such a demand.
Well, to begin with, it tells us that Christianity (or Judaism) for that matter is likely to be speaking the truth, since we notice from experience that God is hidden.
And when God intervenes in nature and does something we judge, by the moral law he gave us, to be evil, then what? We're talking about events God causes or directs to be caused in creation.
Quoting Agustino
A straw man. It's not lifted above, but made to be identical with God himself. God is not merely good, he is goodness itself. Do you reject the doctrine of divine simplicity? It seems like you do, which is another hallmark of Protestant thinking.
Quoting Agustino
I still don't get the relevance. Are you saying that the repugnant things are suddenly no longer repugnant once sin goes away? Ugly and evil things just disappear? That would be an interesting claim to the extent that it suggests you are an annihilationist.
Quoting Agustino
But you don't. Calvin tried justifying his doctrine of double predestination by saying that God predestined those to be damned in order to manifest his glory. You tried justifying the admirability of God being beyond good and evil by precisely the same justification. It seems that God's "glory" is always appealed to when trying to smooth over theologically absurd or morally repellent claims.
Quoting Agustino
I made an analogy between a father and his child. Do you reject that God is a father and that we are his children? It seems you must do so in order to say that my analogy is "fallacious."
Quoting Agustino
Now you're saying that God can't break his law, after you've just beaten me over the head with the claim that God can do what he wants, because he's above and beyond the law? Tell me how you have not just contradicted yourself here.
Quoting Agustino
Alright, so then anti-natalism follows. Why create more humans corrupted by the fall? You're just perpetuating the fall and its corruption indefinitely.
Briefly, because, from my present and by no means exhaustive understanding of the history of the Great Schism, it was the East that broke from the West, and not vice-versa. Other reasons include the fact that I like the idea of purgatory, see nothing wrong with the Filioque, and see historical precedent in the doctrines of papal primacy and infallibility.
Then, as matters of taste, I prefer Western church architecture to Eastern, and I like that the Catholic Church actually lives up to its name. It accepts Eastern rites, saints, and theologians. It can be found everywhere on the globe. It has produced the most saints. It's founded dozens of top tier universities. Etc. Eastern Orthodoxy is way too bound up with the ethnic identities of Eastern European countries, and is almost entirely found in those countries.
On this, we are very much in agreement. It creates a big problem for the East. My problems with Catholicism though is that it has had a very turbulent history with many committed atrocities that I find hard to accept, and I dont like that it has adjusted itself so much to modernity that it is nowdays hard to go somewhere and find the old mass in latin rite with gregorian chant... That they have almost abandoned that is a catastrophy IMO
I don't know what you're including under atrocities, but I find many of them attributed to the Church to be overblown. A lot of anti-Catholic myths surround things like the Crusades and the Inquisition, for example.
I agree with you about the liturgy, though. The Catholic Church, in the false "spirit of Vatican II" almost succeeded in selling its birthright for a mess of pottage when it comes to the Mass. Benedict XVI has been influential in reviving the Latin form of it, though, so I hope it continues its comeback. Or at least, I hope the Ordinary Form can become more solemn and reverent.
This is a question, not a challenge: do you think there are 'ugly and evil things' 'in Heaven'?
I would have thought not, and furthermore, that this is at least relevant to the discussion.
As far as I know, annihilationism isn't condoned by Eastern Orthodoxy, of which he is a member. So it is a challenge.
I would have thought the answer to that was 'no' according to every Christian denomination.
In death, if the last stage near shutdown is reached, at the end of lives, the world (with its ugliness & "evil"), the body, identity, events and time disappear, along with the knowledge that there ever were such things.
Maybe that Timelessness then, at the end of lives, could be called Eternity, and you could word that, in terms of your own religion, as heaven.
But when it's reached, there's no world, or any hint that there ever was one.
By the way, Hinduism, and probably Buddhism too, suggest that, near the beginning of death, well before shutdown has eliminated identity, time, etc., there are temporary heavens (for some people) and temporary hells (for other people) ...something quite distinct from the Eternity at the end of lives.
(...the end of lives being reached only by a very few most fully life-experienced and life-completed people)
If that's so, I don't have an explanation for it.except that it sounds similar to the NDEs at the very beginning of death.
Michael Ossipoff
I agree with you about the liturgy, though. The Catholic Church, in the false "spirit of Vatican II" almost succeeded in selling its birthright for a mess of pottage when it comes to the Mass. Benedict XVI has been influential in reviving the Latin form of it, though, so I hope it continues its comeback. Or at least, I hope the Ordinary Form can become more solemn and reverent."
The two worst atrocities IMO is the corruption that occured in the Church that still led to the reformation. I am not Pro Luther, but I do understand that he had a Point when he said the Church was corrupted. The other of the two worst atrocities is how it before used the threat of eternal damnation and painted up vivid and horrible pictures of what hell was (the physical torture there etc.) that caused poor uneducated people in that time to be terrorized by fear and horror over the idea that they would end up there. And why did they threat People like this? To gain and keep Control over the masses, by causing them, the fearful, sensitive and uneducated ones, to submit to The Church. All about power.
Do we really know this, though, or are we simply projecting what we think they would have thought onto them?
Quoting Beebert
Well, was there any alternative? Civilization basically collapsed when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, so don't underestimate the level of destitution and illiteracy this caused in Europe. It took monks many months just to copy a single book, if they weren't slaughtered and their books burned in a Viking raid, that is. Moreover, these "fearful, sensitive, and uneducated masses" voluntarily became Christians in most cases when missionaries came to their lands, so whatever control the Church exercised over them was already consented to by them. They also made up the Church, in that they built the churches, cathedrals, and monasteries, while their children became monks, nuns, and priests.
Anyway, there are other concerns; the theological differences between East and West, where the East have been more faithful to a mystical understanding of things and to theologians like Gregory of Nyssa and Maximos the Confessor... In the Western view it is often said that in Adam we all sinned. In the Orthodox understanding however, original sin is not about an inherited guilt. It is instead about the consequences of living in a world that now is sinful. Because of that difference the Orthodox understand sin not in terms of transgression and penalty, as the catholics are more inclined to do, but rather in the terms of bondage and sickness. I believe that this is a healthier way to approach what both east and west are trying to describe. Because of that, the east's understanding of what salvation is, is transformative rather than judicial. The real object of salvation is God bringing about an inner change in us. The Atonement is about recapitulation, rather than appeasement. In the words of Ephesians 1:10, “God’s purpose is, in the fulness of the times, to sum up,” or recapitulate, “all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth…” The need for Atonement is not a need to satisfy God’s wrathful desire to punish, but rather the need for Atonement is the need to recreate in us the image of God that we had lost because of our loss of communion with Him, and to free us from our bent toward sin...
If God causes the event directly, then it would be beyond good and evil.
Quoting Thorongil
Hmm okay, so then where does evil come from? Evil exists eternally like some kind of absence?
Quoting Thorongil
No. God's transcendence would imply that doctrine.
Quoting Thorongil
The relevance is that you would then not use the Law to judge God's actions. Using the Law to judge God is an effect of sin, or so would be my claim.
Quoting Thorongil
Is morality defined by God's Law? Is God the Creator of the Law? Presuming you've answered these two by yes, then it would follow that God - as Creator of the Law - cannot be judged using the Law. So how is this theologically absurd?
Quoting Thorongil
God is in many ways like a Father, but He's also different from your earthly father.
Quoting Thorongil
Because whatsoever God does, it wouldn't count as breaking the Law - precisely because God is above the Law, and thus not subject to it. By not being subject to the Law, there is no sense in which you could say that God would break it.
Quoting Thorongil
In the sense of St. Augustine's statement, it might (although I'm not ready to go there).
Google "The Council of Nicea", to read about what I'm talking about.
No one even tries to deny, for example, that a significant number of books were removed from the Bible at Nicea, because they didn't suit the Bishops' &/or the Emperor's agenda
Search Google for James McGrath's completely objective review of Bart Ehrman's Forged: Writing for God
Also, google Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus.
Forgery was rampant in the Bible. McGrath says that most scholars would agree with that. It's well-accepted that about half of the books in the New Testament weren't written by the person to whom they're attributed.
Ehrman is quoted as saying, "The New Testament wasn't written by God. It has human fingerprints all over its pages." But wasn't that obvious to all of us?
Didn't you get the impression that there was something fishy, when the Gospels keep quoting Christ as saying things to the effect of "Believe on me, or else". Does that sound like something that Jesus would say?
And the Old Testament's "wrathful God" was just the product of some wrathful writers.
Acts 4:13 says that Peter and John were illiterate. But, later, books of the Bible are attributed to them as the authors.
It's said, and McGrath seems to agree, that only about half of what was attributed to Paul was really written by Paul.
Paul's forgers contradicted eachother regarding his position on women's participation in the church.
By the way, quashing the notion of women having participation or status in the church was one of the agendas at the Council of Nicea.
In the first few centuries of Christianity, there were about 100 forgeries written in the name of members of Jesus' inner-circle.
If someone wanted to say or promote something, what better way than to attribute it to someone famous.
Such rampant lying is unbecoming for a book claiming to be the Truth.
Does anyone really believe that God wrote the Bible?
Another thing:
I don't usually get an opportunity to talk to a Biblical literalist. Don't take offense when I express disagreement with that position.
...But, don't you see that you're having faith in a bunch of writers? Is that what religious faith should be?
There's no reason why faith in God should mean faith in a bunch of writers who claim to be speaking for God.
Do you see the difference? It isn't the same thing.
You asked why authoritarian authors would have a motive to attribute heinous orders to God.
You've got to be kidding.
Say you want to do something heinous. Say you want to say that God is on your side, and told you to do it, and told other people to support it. Then you'd be strongly motivated to invent a God who gives heinous orders.
And the Abraham murder-order story makes no sense. Why would God give such an order, to murder a child who hadn't done anything to anyone, other than a test of Abraham's obedience to carry out even the most heinous act?
Maybe you believe in such a God. That, and the Canaan massacre-orders that you believe that God issued, wouldn't come from God.
Oh yes, the justification for that belief is always, a statement that God's ways are mysterious. That's being used as a convenient cover, for the most obviously-wrong claims about what God has ordered.
I'm certainly not saying that God is explainable. But when we're told that God ordered something obviously, blltantly heinous, the obvious and simple explanation is that someone is lying.
You said that I'm motivated to promote anti-Church propaganda. Look, do you think that the Church needs me to discredit it? It does that eminently well on its own.
For example, when the Church charges admission to heaven, by running the scam of taking money to help someone get into heaven.
For example, by the disproportionate number of pedophiles in the priesthood. ...and pedophile-enablers in the Church administrative hierarchy.
etc., etc.
Michael Ossipoff
David Bentley Hart's book Atheist Delusions is a salutary reminder of the revolutionary nature of Christianity in the formation of Europe - ' bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value.'
Quoting Agustino
Evil arises from ignorance, which is mainly, or even only, wanting the wrong things! When I say 'evil has no real existence', what I mean is that evil has no being, there is nothing that is intrinsically evil.
(The crucial point is, that without the 'chain of being', no theological philosophy makes sense. The chain of being allows for different levels of reality, whereby things that are real on one level, are unreal on another. So things both do and do not exist, and both are and are not real, depending on the perspective from which they're being seen. This is precisely the understanding which was collapsed by later Medieval scholasticism, hence the never-ending quandaries and contradictions in "modern" thought.)
In ancient philosophy, 'being' was itself a kind of a virtue (an intuition which is preserved in the ontological arguments.) So what 'truly is', were the various kinds of substance, (or, better, ouisia, which is nearer to 'being' than 'substance'.) So 'being' was overall good, 'non-being' or nothingness was an imperfection; this is the idea behind the 'pleroma' (which is still part of Greek Christianity and also gnosticism).
So, in this understanding, evil comes about because humans don't properly understand, cherish, be grateful for, what is*. They are driven by their own sense of lack or incompleteness to seek fulfilment in all kinds of spurious, imaginary or fantastic ends and means, which can develop into quite astonishingly elaborate forms, even institutionalised violence and tyranny. And that is where evil 'comes from'.
Quoting Agustino
This is actually a very dangerous thing to believe, in my opinion - because if this is so, 'God' is also above any form of predication - we can't even say that God is 'good' or 'just', because, according to this, God's ideas of 'goodness' and 'justice' could be utterly capricious; He might decided that what we think is evil, is good, just because He can.
---------------
* That is why, in Buddhist philosophy, 'seeing what is' (Yath?bh?ta?) is one of the virtues of the Buddha; whereas for the "modern" person, 'what is', is essentially meaningless.
This understanding of God is exactly what caused me to be hospitalized for a month a year ago.
Poppycock. This is to say that evil is not evil.
Quoting Agustino
This returns us to your original argument, which I only granted for the sake of argument. I suppose the response to your question would be that you are mistaken to speak of evil as existing. That is to say, if you grant that evil is the privation of the good, and it is the case that the good alone exists (God), then evil does not exist. God cannot by definition be present where nothing exists, so the contradiction you thought resulted doesn't actually do so.
Quoting Agustino
But as I said, the doctrine also entails that God is goodness, however analogical this claim may be. To enact a complete divorce between goodness and God is not something I've ever seen a traditional Christian theist do.
Quoting Agustino
I'm still uncomfortable with this, as it seems to imply a kind of moral relativism, which would suggest, for example, that there are instances when murder is right. But for God to command murder at one time and condemn it at another offends our moral sensibilities. Murder is intrinsically wrong, no matter the circumstances, which means that its being wrong cannot change. I would rather revise my conception of God and my understanding of those passages of scripture wherein he seems to command murder, than admit that murder is sometimes right.
Quoting Agustino
Not univocally, no.
Quoting Agustino
Right, so my analogy isn't fallacious.
Quoting Agustino
As I said above in this post, this is not the sense in which God cannot break it. You say that he can break it because he is utterly beyond it. I say that God cannot break the law, because the object of the law is the good, so to break it would be to violate his own nature as goodness itself.
Quoting Agustino
I admittedly threw you a slightly off-topic bone here, but this is an interesting response. You don't have to respond in this thread, but what exactly is your view on procreation? I might have mistakenly believed you were an anti-natalist at one point.
Are you being serious?
Damn. I'm sorry that happened. I guess it goes to show that ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver would say, sometimes physically deleterious ones.
I don't think he's out of the woods yet, as I too detect something similar to what you do in him.
I won't try and repeat the gist of the book, for that read the 'fundamental point' section in the blog post above. But the immensely valuable job that Gillespie does is trace the dialects of the processes behind the rise of 'modernity' as a world-view and really digs down into the roots of nominalism in the rise of 'scientism'.
There are two other sources which cover similar territory - Richard Weaver's book, which Thorongil mentioned above, is one - but don't want to overload the post. But the point is, Beebert, what you're experiencing is a cultural problem, manifesting in those forms, because you're a sensitive, intelligent, and spiritual person, who has been burdened with a corrosive form of religiosity. But don't despair: the very fact you're having this discussion is part of the cure!
The Book sounds very interesting!
Take that, Calvin!
"Well, to begin with, it tells us that Christianity (or Judaism) for that matter is likely to be speaking the truth, since we notice from experience that God is hidden."
Those two traditions are not alone in Holding this view. Your answer is in all different ways a strawman. You must say something more than that. To say "jews and christians say that God is hidden and history shows he is so they must be true" I find to be a strawman and a ridiculous argument. And it has nothing to do with what Nietzsche REALLY said in the quote.
Btw, regarding Socrates; which Socrates are you referring to when you praise him? ;) The Picture of him by Plato or that by the dramatist Aristophanes? The latter presents Socrates in his play 'The Clouds' as a petty thief, a fraud and a sophist with a specious interest in physical speculations. However, it is still possible to recognize in him the distinctive individual defined in Plato's dialogues.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, God is above any form of predication - exactly! Have you been reading the theologians lately? You've opened up Lossky once again, or Dionysius? That is my exact point! He is above goodness, above Justice, etc.
Quoting Wayfarer
But your judgement of God is pathetic otherwise. You pretend that God is some sort of man, and if there is no Law to govern his behaviour, then He will "misbehave" :s You have still not given up on the idol of your own self which you project unto your imagination of God.
Quoting Thorongil
No, it's actually not. For someone to be evil, they have to break the moral Law. God cannot break the moral Law as He is not its subject. Therefore God cannot be evil.
Quoting Thorongil
This is precisely the reification that I've condemned. I know St. Augustine and the later Saints supported this view, but I think it's absolutely wrong. Does this privation of the good exist? You will now say yes. So apparently, something - the free will of man - can displace God, so that God ceases to exist where the privation of good exists right? So His omnipresence was a joke. That's absurd. And if you'll claim that evil is nothing, then you're even worse than you claim that I am by asserting that God is beyond the Law since you do not take evil seriously.
Quoting Thorongil
Wrong doctrine. Or better said, doctrine at a superficial level. Divine simplicity entails first and foremost that God is beyond the things created and nameable.
Quoting Thorongil
Right, so you've never read Dionysius? You've never read Isaiah? You've never read Christian mystics? :s
Quoting Thorongil
For you? No. (although yes, there are instances when murder is not wrong - or better said excusable. If you attack me with a knife for example, and I end up killing you, that is morally excusable).
Quoting Thorongil
Okay, so what? God is servant to your moral sensibilities? :s
Quoting Thorongil
For the most part yes.
Quoting Thorongil
Please expand on this.
Quoting Thorongil
It is fallacious when you're overextending it, as you are.
Quoting Thorongil
God doesn't have a definable nature in His essence. Divine incomprehensibility IS His nature.
Quoting Thorongil
I think procreation is not immoral. Whether it should be preferable to never procreating is a question for the individual. Some are called to be completely devoted to God. Others are not.
I was never an anti-natalist.
So morality is just morality because God randomly defined what it is, but in reality, the opposite might as well be moral? God makes up rules that we shall obey for the sake of it, but he himself doesnt value them other than as something we must obey? Or how do you mean? If I kill someone randomly, is it immoral because I do something Christ would never do, in other words something God would never do, or is it immoral because God just says so?
I think you are confused as to what "above" actually means. He is defining what God is not, not what he is
What reality? If the essence of morality is God's Law, then that is reality. What you perceive as morality - at least in its untainted version - was written on your heart by God.
Quoting Beebert
It's immoral because you are subject to God's Law - and you were created in such a way as to be subject to it.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, He is defining what God is not:
[quote=]nor godhead nor goodness[/quote]
:-!
'Love will always win'
"It's immoral because you are subject to God's Law - and you were created in such a way as to be subject to it."
Yes correct . Though I prefer to say that it is immoral because we are made in the image of God.
I think you need to study Augustine in his understanding of this more thoroughly. There are many things I find problematic in Augustine's writings, but this is NOT one of them.
A complete misunderstanding of what Augustine was saying.
Agreed. Yet it is quite obvious that the saints would not agree entirely.
I've read quite a bit of Augustine, which passages are you referring to and which works?
Quoting Beebert
I don't claim he said this, I only claim that this would follow.
Quoting Beebert
Can you let me know which ones in particular you'd want me to answer? There's a lot of things I have to answer here and not enough time. Because of the sexism thing I'm behind with a lot of answers, including to others like Janus. So please let me know which ones (link me to them).
Quoting Beebert
In His essence He would be.
Quoting Beebert
Why do you think I treat man like an "it" or a "muppet" (or better said a puppet)? That God is incomprehensible in His essence is true, and asserted by several mystics/saints. Lossky in his Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church also asserts it if I remember correctly. Now what does this have to do with man being an it or a muppet?
Quoting Beebert
I'd say that in my view there is a separation between created things, and the uncreated God. Man goes amongst the created things, but is, through Jesus Christ divinised such that in the afterlife (and for some rare few in this life) theosis is possible.
Quoting Beebert
Why do you say that?
Show me proof of the fact other traditions consider God to be hidden. Do Buddhists consider God to be hidden? Well yeah, so hidden they don't even talk about him. Do Hindus consider God to be hidden? Where?
Quoting Beebert
It does, because N. was strawmanning. He didn't understand why Pascal was talking about the Hidden God, and instead implied that Pascal thought this was some kind of immorality from God or whatever :s
Quoting Beebert
Plato's dialogues. Aristophanes was a brutish conservative of the status quo of that time largely, and therefore of course he saw Socrates as a corrupter of the youth.
"It does, because N. was strawmanning. He didn't understand why Pascal was talking about the Hidden God, and instead implied that Pascal thought this was some kind of immorality from God or whatever"
I am busy so I Will answer your posts later but: You are way too stubborn and biased and before every discussion you have already made up your mind so I dont know if I really have the interest or power to ger into a discussion about this with you but; you have failed to see what Nietzsche was talking about. Pascal spoke often about how the silence of the infinite space filled him with horror(in a bad way). He doubted a lot. Remember that the copernican revolution took Place not long before? Can you imagine what the resulted in, what this meant for People back then? Of course Augustine gave Pascal some relief because he too had realized how small and yet great man were in a much more profound way than all before him, more so than Aristotle and Plato. Aquinas went back to Aristotle and didnt quite grasp this depth of Augustine, and that resulted in a theology that was built like a house. After the copernican revolution, the thomistic worldview was severely injured from inside, because the world revealed itself in its immeasurability. Nietzsche talks about how these and other things all the way through history really affects the common men in history, the poor unknowing common man, who just gets thrown into life without knowing and reflecting over why and becomes affected by the Culture and understanding of his time, to his own destruction. And then he sees how Pascal understood these things and yet didnt.
"The Eternal Silence Of These Infinite Spaces Terrifies Me" - Pascal
Your constant babble about strawmanning is BTW pathetic beyond comprehension.
In an earlier post, you agreed that God is Goodness.
(...as I said too.)
Michael Ossipoff
Reference? And I would agree that he's Goodness, but only in the analogical, not categorical way. Ultimately he is beyond that.
From what I've read of the Eastern position, there isn't a bad Eternity, because people who have a some (or lots of) bad coming, don't reach Eternity yet.
According to that position, Eternity is only reached by someone who is pure, good, and fully-completed in those regards..
Michael Ossipoff
I'd said:
Quoting Agustino
I'll find where you said it and paste it into a post, with the date and page stated.
You continued:
So your God isn't really Goodness (except by analogy??)?
What then?
You might say the Creator, but then you seem to making creation into something abstract, neither good, bad or neutral. ...abstracting creation from Goodness. I suggest that abstraction like that is only something that philosophers come up with. I don't think that it's valid to believe in creation abstracted from Goodness.. I suggest that God is the reason why what is, is good
....the good intent behind what is.
Michael Ossipoff
No, not in-so-far as Goodness (being a concept) is a limitation.
Sounds like abstract philosophy. Whether abstract philosophy is appropriate in this instance is the question.
Michael Ossipoff
Well, as I like to point out, the Eastern position is implied by Skepticism, the most parsimonious, the fully parsimonious, and therefore the most plausible and believable, metaphysics.
Michael Ossipoff
"Show me proof of the fact other traditions consider God to be hidden. Do Buddhists consider God to be hidden? Well yeah, so hidden they don't even talk about him. Do Hindus consider God to be hidden? Where?"
Have you not heard of maya in hindu thought? Have you not read the Vedas and Vedanta? The upanishads? Dont you understand what maya really means? :S
Regarding buddhism: Yes and that is a profound thing. If Buddha never experienced what Isaiah experienced, why should he speculate and pretend to know about things he didnt? Why talk about someone who was so hidden that there was nothing to talk about?
"Plato's dialogues. Aristophanes was a brutish conservative of the status quo of that time largely, and therefore of course he saw Socrates as a corrupter of the youth."
Hahaha. You have read that on Wikipedia or? Your Pride is frightening. What make you think you know? Regarding Aristophanes being conservative is what People have speculated about. You clearly havent read any Aristophanes.
I'd said;
You replied:
Goodness isn't a limitation for a God who is Goodness itself.
My argument on this matter is this, which I said a few posts ago:
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Michael Ossipoff
"Why do you think I treat man like an "it" or a "muppet" (or better said a puppet)? That God is incomprehensible in His essence is true, and asserted by several mystics/saints. Lossky in his Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church also asserts it if I remember correctly. Now what does this have to do with man being an it or a muppet?"
I explained this in the above post. It is the natural consequence of how you take from the mystics without really caring about what they intended to achieve.
"I've read quite a bit of Augustine, which passages are you referring to and which works?"
Confessions. He speaks about how for God, evil doesnt exist. Not for God, nor for his creation when viewed as a whole. Because nothing outside or within can break his order. Something can only be "counted" as evil for another, because two parts might not fit each other. But that which in this is evil, it is wrong (perhaps blasphemous, at least a sin) for us to call evil according to Augustine, because that which is evil in one way, harmonizes with something else and is in itself therefore good. And all parts that doesnt harmonize with each other can though harmonize with the "lower part", which is in harmony with something greater. This is part of what you dont quite seem to grasp.
I find capriciousness and evil to be highly incomprehensible actually. Whether theism is true or not, evil often defies easy explanation.
We were talking about God causing an event that we know from the law to be evil, like murder. You replied by saying that, if God caused the event, it would be beyond good and evil. But this makes the event both evil and not evil at the same time, which is impossible.
Quoting Agustino
Please bear in mind that I have tried to speak on behalf of classical theism for the sake of this discussion. That being said, from that perspective, I don't see why claiming that evil is nothing is not to take evil seriously. Why would that follow?
Quoting Agustino
The position I am defending says that, while God is in himself beyond whatever we might predicate of him, we can nonetheless truthfully predicate certain things of him in an analogical sense. If you, on the other hand, really believe that nothing can be predicated of God, not even analogically, then I fail to see how the word "God" has any meaning whatsoever. You'd best stop using it and remain silent, a la Wittgenstein.
I also stand by my claim that I have never heard a traditional Christian theist make your claim. There are roughly two schools concerning predication, the analogical and the univocal. I've already explained what I take the former to assert. The latter school would say that what we mean by good and evil applies unambiguously to God, e.g. to say of a human being that he is good and to say of God that he is good is to use the word "good" in precisely the same sense.
Quoting Agustino
I don't think a careful reading of them would yield the conclusion you've reached. Nor do I believe they all fail to describe God as good. It's also ironic that you bring up Dionysius, who believed that evil was indeed nothing.
Quoting Agustino
That's not murder. That's manslaughter. Murder always wrong (intrinsically evil).
Quoting Agustino
See above.
Quoting Agustino
Interesting. Thanks for clarifying.
I am not sure he has understood or appreciated Wittgenstein. If he did he would be silent long time ago, which I have told him a few times.
The closest would be calvinism. Though agustino doesnt like calvinism...
Yeah, maybe so.
Found an interesting, relevant article. I quote from the final paragraph:
So, Agustino, I don't think Beebert and I are off the mark in detecting Protestant strains in your thinking.
That what is, is good, isn't explainable, and calls only for gratitude.
...and gratitude for the good intent that's behind what is.
Michael Ossipoff
I meant to add that "create" sounds anthropomorphic, especially since it's agreed here that God isn't an element of metaphysics.
Michael Ossipoff
Let me reply again to this post. Maybe a stronger suggestion can be made. Metaphysics isn’t really off-topic in this topic, because it relates to your comment/question about what’s true.
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Quoting Beebert
In answer, I said that the Eastern position regarding our future is implied by Skepticism, and that Skepticism is particularly believable and plausible because of its complete parsimony. Maybe something stronger can be said:.
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Actually, it seems to me that the Principle of Parsimony carries a lot more weight in metaphysics than in physics. …to the point of being compelling, or even conclusive. I’ve acknowledged that metaphysicses can’t be proved, but that might not be quite so, if parsimony is conclusive.
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I suggest that a metaphysics with a brute fact wouldn’t “happen”, wouldn’t be true. Why should it?
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A brute-fact is something that doesn’t have a reason. So obviously there’s no reason why it should be so, then there’s no reason to believe it to be so. And I further suggest that, in metaphysics, the absence of any reason for a metaphysics to be so, is a conclusive reason for it to not be so.
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I realize that that’s a strong suggestion.
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Why should there be the fundamentally, independently, existent, metaphysically-primary physical world of Materialism? If Materialists can’t give a reason for it, because there isn’t a reason for it, then I suggest that it wouldn’t be true.
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So I suggest that the metaphysics that I propose, completely parsimonious, is the one that can and must be.
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Reincarnation:
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For the purpose of this discussion, the relevant difference between the metaphysics that I propose, vs the metaphysics of traditional Western religion, is reincarnation. Traditional Western religion says that everyone goes to Eternity at the end of this life. ]…a good Eternity or a bad Eternity.
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Eastern religions say that someone who has something bad coming won’t go to Eternity, but will instead be reincarnated (maybe after a temporary hell). …and that, in fact, nearly everyone will experience reincarnation, maybe after a temporary heaven or hell.
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So, for the purpose of this discussion, reincarnation is the relevant East-West difference.
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As I’ve been saying, reincarnation is implied by Skepticism, the metaphysics that I propose.
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The reason why you’re in this life will remain, only somewhat modified, at the end of this life (unless you’ve, during this lifetime, achieved the status of an ascended-master, someone with no remaining needs, wants, undischarged consequences of consequence-producing acts,).
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Now, I should admit that I can’t prove that death won’t amount to just going to sleep, dreamless, awareness-less sleep.
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So maybe I should say that reincarnation is consistent with Skepticism, rather than implied by it.
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But:
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1. If there’s continuing anything after death, awareness and consciousness, instead of drift into a dreamless, awareness-less, nothingness-sleep, then Skepticism does imply that it will be reincarnation instead of immediate arrival at Eternity after this life.
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2. There’s some reason to believe that death doesn’t become awareness-less-ness. Near-death experiences (NDEs), for one thing. Besides, sleep isn’t experience-less, with its dreams.
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3. It has been suggested that even deep sleep is experienced, at least at its periphery, and merely isn’t remembered later.
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By the way, reincarnation was mentioned in Christian scriptures, until those books were discarded at the Council Of Nicea. It has been plausibly suggested that reincarnation was deleted because the threat of eternal hell facilitates the extraction of money from old, rich sinners. As I said, even to this day, the Catholic church collects money to pray people into heaven…if they can afford it. Can’t afford to buy your way into heaven? Too bad!
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Michael Ossipoff
...meaning that, even if Materialism were true, a Materialist nature of this particlar physical world wouldn't change the inevitability of the infinitely-many possibility worlds, and therefore wouldn't rule-out reincarnation.
...a matter relevant to what we were talking about.
So, even if Materialism were true of this particular physical world, it would be superfluous and irrelevant overall.
Michael Ossipoff