TrueMyth

Hello! Thank you for your response!

I'm afraid that you're still creating a distinction which I do not acknowledge. You believe my definition is circular, and it would be if I was defining two separate and distinct qualities. I am not. I am stating a tautology. My definition is no more circular than saying "Two is the integer between one and three, and the integer between one and three is two".

Thus, it creates a contradiction in terms for God to will evil. Two cannot be anything other than the integer between one and three, b/c that is essential to its nature. It cannot lose that and still be two. In addition, the integer between one and three will always and in all possible worlds be two. In the same way, God cannot have any evil in either His will or His nature, b/c to do so would be to be some being other than God, just as two cannot not be the integer between one and three, for to do so would be to be some integer other than two.

Thus, I need not answer the question because it is nonsense. If someone asked me "What would you do if you were absolutely certain that Two was no longer the integer between One and Three, but still retained all its properties of Twoness which you know and love?" I would either a) laugh and shake my head and walk away, or b) run screaming in fear b/c the Law of Noncontradiction had obviously ceased to apply.

Perhaps this helps? Thanks again!

Sarpedon

TrueMyth, jbc, this is a discussion of morality, not the nature or lack thereof of God. As much as I would like to throw in my 2 cents, I don't want to contribute to a derail. Please get back to the issue at hand, which is "If god commanded you to kill, would you do it." If you believe that your god wouldn't do such a thing, then obviously the question doesn't apply to you. If you would like, I can split this off to EoG or MRD for further exploration.

TrueMyth

Thanks IRON MAN! (insert Frank Oz) The question you pose, very good is...

Have you seen my explanation in other replies about the false distinction between God and goodness? Look particularly at my latest reply to jbc. Could you please tell me what you think of it?

In light of that, I would answer your robot dilemma in this way: Yep. That poor robot is going to self-destruct. His moral commands are obviously potentially logically contradictory. Unlike God's commands to us. Allow me to manipulate your wonderful analogy:

We free robots have been given two (non-exhaustive) moral laws:

1) Obey your creator
2) Do not kill, unless this contradicts with #1

The order of hierarchy is very important to the self-contained logicalness of the command subset. Thus, we are ordered to kill by our creator, and we must do so, since the clause of #2 removes us from obeying #2. However, when we insert an innocent person into the equation (as the OP does), we encounter the dilemma that our creator is now self-referentially contradictory. At this point, we the free robot do not self-destruct, all of reality does instead.

God is the ultimate source of Logic, Reason, and Common Sense. Not only would He not be otherwise, He cannot, for to do so would be to create a round square.

As far as the arbitrariness of the moral laws goes, they are not: they derive their content from God's nature, which is Goodness Itself (think Platonic forms here)

I hope this helps! Thanks for your thoughts!

TrueMyth

OK

Valmont

And, in the context, it is God's mercy that is significant rather than His demand for human sacrifice. There was nothing unusual about Semitic deities demanding child sacrifices. The point of the story is that Abraham's hand is stayed and God Himself provides the sacrifice. It points forward, albeit unconsciously, to God's own crucifiction, taking on our burden of death that we might have life.

Sarpedon

And what about the story of Jephthah and how he sacrifices his daughter to YaHooWaHoo? (Judges 11:34) As illustrated charmingly here ? Here is a guy who promises YaHooWaHoo the first thing that he meets on returning home, and it happens to be his only child. So he kills her. There is no angel stopping him, and in fact, YaHooWaHoo could have arranged it so that he was met first by his dog, or his sheep, or whatever. There is no mercy evident. In exchange for YaHooWaHoo's help in slaughtering his enemies, Jephthah slaughters his only daughter. Anyone who worships this god and thinks he wouldn't ask the OP question is fooling himself.

IRON MAN

I agree that from a theist point of view it would be hard to believe that God changed his mind like in the OP, but then again for God ALL things are possible.

A xian serves God willingly for who He is, and the belief that His nature is the same as theirs, (created in His Image).

You, as a creation, have no ability to change your basic nature, but God, (for whom all things are possible), does.

The OP asks us to suspend belief a moment and pretend that he does, and asks us what our choices would be then.

This is a bit of a mind bender, for someone who believes God to be truthful when He says that He is truth and unchanging, and may seem to be a meaningless or pointless discussion, but that doesn't automatically make it a nonsense question.

I believe that my wife is faithful, and would never cheat on me, but I also concede the possibility that she is a being with choice, and it is therefore hypothetically possible for her to make that choice. So if someone asked me, "What would you do if your wife cheated on you?" I would not respond, "She wont, so your question is a nonsense question." Even though I believe 100% that she wont.

Consider the total absurdity for scientists when Einstein proposed that time was not constant, and the speed of light was. If the possibility had been dismissed outright, then no discussion could follow.

And since you were talking about numbers, try calculus:

j = The Squareroot of -1

If you say to the teacher, "That is nonsense, you can't take the squareroot of a negative number." then you have a problem from the start.

arkirk

This is truly amazing! How can you expect anybody to accept a tautology? More important WHY DO YOU WANT ANYBODY TO BUY YOUR TAUTOLOGY? If one does not acknowledge your God, then they also do not acknowledge ANY OF ITS QUALITIES...PARTICULARLY ITS GOODNESS, OR ITS RIGHTNESS. Tautology is frowned on in virtually all philosophical debates. It is saying, "I am bringing something to the table with which THERE CAN BE NO ARGUMENT. Such argument amounts to bailing out of the debate, closing the door and saying "this space is mine...inviolable. "

So whether you choose to debate as a fun game and pastime or consider that perhaps the most weighty part of man's intellectual existince should be explored through debate, you are not going to want to hear ANOTHER RELIGIOUS TAUTOLOGY.

TrueMyth

Thanks for your reply!

Oh, God-- you had to bring in calculus, huh? I haven't had that since high school...

I understand your point that you are making about it being hard for us to comprehend how God could change His nature, but it is not impossible for him. I see why you might think this to be the case. Unfortunately, I don't for several reasons.

When I refer to the problem as nonsense, I mean it is logical non-sense. It is asking about a round square or a waffle so big God can't eat it. The properties are logically inconsistent. A square has the properties of having four sides of equal length which intersect to form right angles. A circle has the property of having either no sides or an infinite number of sides (depending on which mathematician you ask), and no angles. There logically cannot be any such thing which has no angles, an infinite number of sides, four sides, and sides of equal length all at once. Similarly, for God to change His nature, He would have to perform logical non-sense, which He cannot do.

This raises a question of his omnipotence, and this is outside the scope of the thread, but suffice it to say that I have no problem whatsoever with a God which cannot do nonsense. Omnipotence is the ability to do whatever is logically possible. This is the classical formation-- it is not my invention.

Regarding your analogy with your wife, I point out that it is in no way logically inimical to your wife's nature to commit adultery. It may be morally (I doubt it, since I believe we are all fallen human beings), but not logically. Thus, the analogy does not hold. To reiterate this, the question at hand is not my belief about what God will do, but what His nature dictates.

Because I'm an idiot when it comes to calculus, can you please explain to me what you mean by "j"? Thanks!

I appreciate your responses.

TrueMyth

Welcome! Thanks for joining in!

The existence of God is not at question here-- He is a hypothesis in the OP. In fact, if anything, the OP assumes His existence. Therefore, I am simply defining the God which is assumed in the OP.

It is actually quite easy to debate a tautology. Let me pose another one: rain = dust = rain. I believe rain and dust are logically the same. Let's evaluate it: rain has teh properties of Falling From the Sky, Wetness, Under 32 Degrees Farenheitness, etc. Dust sometimes falls from the sky, but we recognize it as dust equally on the ground, dust is most assuredly not wet (to be so would be to become Mud), and it has no intrinsic temperature limit. Thus, my tautology can be deduced to not hold, since the two entities have logically incompatible properties.

A tautology can also be evaluated as a hypothesis in an overall scheme. Here's how it works: granted Tautology X, how does this explain the data (or theory)? My tautology works great as a hypothesis in teh DCT dilemma.

Thanks for your thoughts!