Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

philechat,
YES! You absolutely could! You could even change your legal name to 'God'. However would that make you the divine creator of the universe? Does changing your name to the presidents make you the president? Would that mean anything to anyone else but you? No. It would be completely subjective. It would not be universal.

You would not be the real objective authority/standard of what is 'good' and 'evil'? For if you can do it...than your neighbor can do it and I can do it. Thus 'good' and 'evil' don't mean anything anymore...they are mere preferences of whoever happens to be using the term at the time.


Notice that this argument has nothing specific about morality...this also holds for math. *You* could define a math such that 2+2=5. I could define it as 2+2=3. However, would that mean that these maths are A-meaningful and B-useful? No.

This is why 'good is defined as God's character' is a tautology (just as 2+2=4 is) that is meaningful. It is an objective reality. It does not change no matter who happens to be looking at it.

Thoughts and comments welcomed,


Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Automaton,
You may want to rethink this. Logic itself is a tautology. Notice you don't 'prove' T AND T = T or T OR F = T. These logical operators are simply defined that way. Saying that good is defined in terms of God's heart is nothing more than this.

I am assuming of course that you DO NOT think that logic is meaningless.



I think I see the disconnect. From a theists point of view we are not trying to say anything about God when we say 'good is God's character'.
We are making a statement not about God, but about the moral fabric of life. We are not defining Gods moral system...we are defining our moral system in terms of God's.

Thoughts and comments welcomed,

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

philechat

Sorry...2+2 = 4 is NOT objective. It is consensual. Humans AGREE UPON 2+2=4.

Decimal system is NOT universal. The ancient Mayans used 8 as units and got a workable mathmatical system using their terminology.

The act of counting is a simplification of the phenomena, similar to the way we abscribe the term "dog" to both St. Brenard and Chiwawa. We interpret similar phenomenal objects to be the same and thus the counting process...

Oh, well. I guess you never read Kant and so I will stop here.

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

DaveJes1979

Automation: If one allows this definition, then I myself am omniscient/omnipotent, because the things I cannot do must be logically impossible because I cannot do them (and I am limited by my own being).

Dave: your confusion springs forth from the fact that you haven't differentiated between the domain of POWER (which omnipotence addresses) and the domain of logic. To be omnipotent, means that God's power cannot be increased or decreased. "God is able to do whatever he wills in the way in which he wills it." (Gordon Lewis)

Reguarding the "pseudo-tasks", one must ask how much POWER it would take to accomplish the self-contradictory? Well, here one must "realize that such irrationalities belong to the domain of logic (and are condemned by it) and not to the domain of power at all." (R. Reymond).

philechat Another circular argument?
"What is good? Those that belong to the heart of God."
"What belongs to the heart of God? All that is good."

Meaningless tautology.

Dave: it is a tautology - but it is only "meaningless" if it is understood in a vacuum. The entirety of the Bible, in fact, explains to us what goodness is through what God does, and what God requires of us, and in the goodness of his creation as well.

You may balk all you like about the "circularity" involved there. But it is a necessary circularity, because one must always begin their thinking somewhere (theist or not).

Dave Gadbois

philechat

Cool...Dave.

The famous circular argument:
"God exists."
"How do you know?"
"The Bible says so."
"How do you know the Bible is true?"
"The Bible is the word of God."

Note that Allah (PBUH) stated similar things in the Koran.

Hmmm...something fishy is going on...

By the way I am not exactly pleased with the aesthetic taste of the Bible...for some reason Greek tragedies and Japanese novels seem more "divinely inspired" than that Holy Book everyone raves about.

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

Automaton

You may be thinking of the so-called laws of logic, such as the Law of Identity (A is A). Defining the Law of Identity is not a tautology, is the Law itself is not referred to within the definition. A is A is the perfect example of tautology, because no new information is gained. It's obvious, that A is itself, for it could not be anything other than itself. A is defined as A, without any other information, is indeed meaningless.
Huh? You are making a statement about God that is really not a statement about God at all, and is rather a statement about ourselves? Does saying "God is omnipotent", entail that we are talking about the nature of our own power and abilities?

Automaton

Fine, if logic doesn't apply to God, or God's properties, then God both exists and doesn't exist, is both good and evil, and is both all-powerful and all-weak. No coherent thing could ever be said about God, one might as well talk of the Omnipurple Kwagilax. Thank you, by denying God logic, you have saved us the trouble of arguing against the unconcept of it/non-it, and have given everyone reason to be practical atheists.

HRG

True. But why should a creator of the universe define what is "good" or "evil" to humans ? Those concepts are human inventions, not preexisting in some Platonic heaven.
Sure. This "whoever" includes any god, of course. Why should his/her preferences suddenly become the one and only standard ?

Definitions are not true or false; they are convenient or not, useful or not, common or not ...

BTW, did "yellow" or "republican" have to be defined by God in order to mean anything ? If not, why should "good" be any different ?
This is just a case of switching symbols (5 resp. 3 instead of 4).
But it is simply your definition of "good" which ties it to God's character. I just changed it by "Good is defined by what the majority of humans approves of". See, how easy it is to change a definition - how could they have an objective character ?

IOW, "good" and "evil" - as any other words of our language - are defined by our use of them.

Ron Singh

Automaton:
God is not defined as omnibelevolent. All God can be defined as is a supernatural creator, if you were to define God at all, to universally define most (and all of the) Gods (that I know of). You are merely constructing a strawman. You would be better off trying to deconstruct a specific brand of a Christian God. But even then you'de get swat down by something you might have heard called free-will.

Automaton:
This existence of a square circle is not 'against God's will' or in opposition to 'God's omnipotency', rather it is to the contrary. The set attributes of a creation are in accordance of an omniscient creator. It is the intent of the creator, rather than an unseen affect of a creator.


<a href="http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html:</a>
[editted to fix url]

[ May 12, 2002: Message edited by: sikh ]</p>

Adrian Selby

Sorry to be trite, but what's with the 10 commandments then?

Adrian