Being, Good, and Evil

[polytropos]

Which is exactly why the Problem of Evil is such a powerful argument against God.
I fully agree that Pure Act cannot lack any being, but for the same reason it is absurd that there would be privations anywhere in the creation of this Pure Act.

This does not follow. The privations in creation are not caused by Pure Act; they are instances of nothing, things failing to instantiate their forms where Pure Act does (and in fact can do nothing but) will that things go to their natural ends.

 

[polytropos]

So, if God is good at being cruel and selfish, then God is good.

God could not be selfish. Selfishness is an emotion, which would imply that God needs something (like, for instance, the worship of human beings). That is, of course, nonsense, because God needs nothing and can be improved by our worship in our no way.

God cannot be cruel because he causes and wills no evil.

 

[Portofino]

This part of the argument actually does not require any sort of intrinsic intentionality. Good is being as desriable. As I note, it is quite possible that we misinterpret what is desirable. People who sin are generally mistaking the good; someone who misses mass is taking extra sleep to be desirable and therefore good. Someone who murders a man to steal his money finds it desirable to do so. In both cases, the person is committing an evil…

The problem I have is that I don’t think that the term desirability can be meaningfully separated from intentionality. When I read the word “desirability,” I automatically ask, “desirable to whom?” That something is desirable requires an agent that does the desiring. If there is such a thing as a “right” or a “wrong” desire, that is the case only as respects an objective, non-perspectival frame of reference regarding what is desirable. And I don’t see how there could be one, unless a. nature was conscious and desired that certain creatures, in turn, have certain desires; or b. there is something behind nature that desires that certain creatures, in turn, have certain desires.

The most I can see is an argument of consensus, something like – “most creatures desire continued life; therefore, continued life is desirable in itself.” Yet I still think that the “in itself” is the leap in logic, which goes from the majority perspective to claiming that this in-itself is non-perspectival.

Recall, again, that the good is being as desirable. As St. Thomas says, the distinction is conceptual, so it has to do with the way we regard being. A thing is good if it “lives up to expectations,” and is bad inasmuch as it fails to live up to expectations…

Expectations of whom? Here again, I don’t think having expectations for another creature is possible without the presence of consciousness and intentionality. My own empirical observation is that nature does not consciously “expect/hopes/desire/want” anything from me. Nature doesn’t hope I conceive children and ensure the survival of my genes. Nature pre-disposes me to desire that, but this is not necessarily because nature desires that I desire that. Nor does it prove that my desire to have offspring is desirable in itself, such that one who doesn’t have that desire (including a celibate individual) or who doesn’t act on is mistaken in what he desires.

Because desire is an intentionality word, (“I (consciously) desire”; “it (consciously) desires” I have to agree with David Hume when he states, “there is nothing, in itself, valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but that these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection.”

I am having a bit of trouble understanding what you are asking here. The privation view does not insist that everything bad is a physical lack (or that every lack reflects a particular evil rather than another evil). Knowing that there is an absence of good does not really tell me much; going back to the human being example, a human being could be worse for having cancer or worse for having committed a sin. The fact that he is worse, alone, doesn’t tell me which. So hatred and indifference might both be an absence of love, but knowing just that there was an absence of love, I could not necessarily distinguish between the two…

I understand. But if the absence of love is not sufficient to account for hatred, then what has to be present for hatred to be manifest? Is the absence of love a sufficient cause of hatred? Is the absence of a desire to help a sufficient cause of the “highest degree” of an intention to harm? One is passive, indeed defined as the lack of something (a lack of charity). The other is more active, not just the absence of goodwill but the presence of positive ill-will.

A ticket machine doesn’t love me – the absence of love is in that ticket machine. By the same token, though, that ticket machine does not hate me, either.

 

[polytropos]

The problem I have is that I don’t think that the term desirability can be meaningfully separated from intentionality.

To make a few points:

• As St. Thomas notes, the distinction is conceptual: good is being in a certain way.
• There is one sense in which this does not require intrinsic intentionality. Good is an aspect of being, which means it has to do with how being is looked at, which means that it is not separated from consciousness. Without humans, perhaps, there would not be a consciousness appraising things as more or less good. God would still be Pure Act, which is conceptually equivalent to Goodness Itself. But to say that they are conceptually equivalent is to say that they are really the same thing viewed differently.
• So the argument is kind of like this: good is being in a certain way. Being will be in such and such a way whether we consider it as more or less good or not. In that sense, the good is objective and does not rely on any sort of conscious appraisal by humans.
• The distinction between being and good is only drawn by humans. As such, we can make errors about whether being in such and such a way is more or less good, but being is still in such and such a way.

All of that, I think, does not rely on any sort of conscious intentionality inherent in nature.

I do think that there is intentionality in nature. I would disagree that it would necessarily, or even often, be thought of as conscious (at least in the direct sense). For instance, a strand of DNA certainly has intentionality. It has a certain purpose and contains information that is pointed towards something outside of itself (and this is regardless of whether I am researching DNA and discovering what it does - it does all of this, quite impressively, whether we know about it or not). A strand of DNA is not, however, conscious; it does not do what it does because it consciously moves towards it. Rather, it does what it does (unwind, let other nucleotides bind to it to produce other strands of DNA, etc.) because it has a form directed toward that end. This is really what Aristotle and Aquinas mean when they call the good “desirable.” A strand of DNA which has mutated severely to make a gene dysfunctional (ie. a frame shift) is not desirable because it will not confer any useful information, which is its end whether that end is consciously desired or not.

I say that I would disagree that intentional nature is fundamentally conscious in the direct sense because the intentionality is ultimately derived from God, who creates and wills the order of final causes (although, even then, one should hesitate to describe God as “conscious” since God is unchanging and eternal, a consciousness is more a temporally reliant quality). Thereby we have the makings of Aquinas’s Fifth Way, which brings us from final causality to God as Supreme Intellect. But that is just a side note for our purposes here.

So I do think we can speak of objective good in nature, even though a particular appraisal of good by humans might be epistemologically limited. Indeed, the proper end of the intellect is to know final causes and to know God, so a good man is one who apprehends his own ends and directs his will toward them.

I understand. But if the absence of love is not sufficient to account for hatred, then what has to be present for hatred to be manifest? Is the absence of love a sufficient cause of hatred?

As I noted with the cancer example, to speak of evil as privation does not mean that something is physically lacking (or whatever would be analogical to that in the case of anger/love). When someone is moved to anger, there might be particular neurotransmitters released in the brain, there might be action potentials that there would not be otherwise, there are certainly thoughts running through one’s mind that would not be there otherwise - all of those are positive and present things that would accompany an emotion like anger. What makes anger a privation of love is not that something is physically (or mentally) lacking, but that it is a departure from what is proper (it is proper to love actively, which entails not being moved to unjustified anger). It is an improper instantiation of the human form, which might be caused by the presence of other things (neurotransmitters, action potentials, thoughts).

Is the absence of a desire to help a sufficient cause of the “highest degree” of an intention to harm? One is passive, indeed defined as the lack of something (a lack of charity). The other is more active, not just the absence of goodwill but the presence of positive ill-will.

It would, again, depend on the form of the thing in question. Not helping, for a human, might be an evil since humans have moral obligations to help when they can. For things which lack moral obligations, it would not be an evil to not help.

A ticket machine doesn’t love me – the absence of love is in that ticket machine. By the same token, though, that ticket machine does not hate me, either.

Quite right. As I said, it is no detraction from our cat that it lacks a kitchen. Those things which are not bound to love are quite naturally not guilty of not loving.

 

[Portofino]

“Good is an intrinsic aspect of being” – I still don’t get it; from my perspective, this reads as a statement (an axiom, if you will) but not a sufficient proof. Aquinas also writes, “For a thing is good according to its desirableness… [Therefore, being is good].”

I’m seemingly incapable of viewing good in this sense as anything but a value judgment – nor desire. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, of course.

I don’t see being as good, or not good; being is. You say that it is human consciousness that separates being and goodness and I say that it is human consciousness that originated the concept of good in the first place Human beings originated the concept of being, as well – but not the reality of being, the thing itself.

With “good”, I am not convinced that we are talking about “the thing itself”; rather, I see it as an emotional appraisal or value judgment. Indeed, I am incapable of speaking of good in a way that is completely divorced either from emotion or subjective judgment.

Of course, since humans are part of creation, then I would have to say that both good and bad are intrinsic aspects of being, at least iwithin the context of that “parcel of matter” that corresponds with human beings. But outside of it, I don’t have evidence that either “good” or “bad” exist as objective realities.

I understand your DNA example more metaphorically, using purpose in a metaphorical sense, “purpose” with quotation marks. The heart functions in such a way that it pumps blood; however, the heart does not have a purpose of pumping blood. Maybe it is language that is tripping up the conversation here. Function does not presuppose intentionality but purpose cannot be divorced from conscious intentionality, and a heart muscle is not known to have it.

I might as well say, “the heart is motivated to pump blood,” which is non-sensical me. In that sense, I think “purpose” is a misleading word (“she did it on purpose”; “she now has a purpose for living”; “thank you for giving me a purpose to my existence”).

I say that I would disagree that intentional nature is fundamentally conscious in the direct sense because the intentionality is ultimately derived from God, who creates and wills the order of final causes

Agreed. If nature has a divine architect, then it does indeed make sense to speak of a purpose for everything in nature, just like the parts of a car do indeed have a purpose, vis-a-vis their conscious maker, and not merely a de facto

These are big questions, I grant On the other hand it seems that certain “ancillary” questions are not relevant to the discussion at hand, yet it also seems as if airing out disagreement on those ancillary or related questions is unavoidable. In this case, one would have to determine what moral obligations entail, and whether nature imposes moral obligations, or whether those moral obligations come from either: a. human societies alone; or b. human societies as well as God. To the society of ancient Israel, it was practically a moral obligation not to help a Samaritan – they were the enemy. So does nature impose an obligation to help? Is the distinction between the human and the animal so clear-cut? Resources are scarce – does nature impose a moral obligation to help, or does nature rather impose the impulse to compete?

 

[Portofino]

One concise definition of function vs purpose, that I found:

“purpose is what something is meant to do. functions are the things it does do”

What I’m claiming is that one cannot adduce the fact that things in nature function in a certain way, as sufficient evidence that it is their purpose to do so. If one starts with proving God, and then using it to inform one’s understanding of nature, I think one would have more sufficient grounds to conflate function with purpose (even though the argument would shift to proving God, proving God’s nature, proving what within nature does or does not fulfill God’s intended purpose for it). Ironically, the aesthetic appreciation of a sunset fulfills no known purpose in a strictly biological sense (unlike concupiscence, which is at least associated with human reproduction, even if it often “fails” to result in it, despite natural intercourse). Yet I imagine the theist believes that the apprecation of beauty – adduced as wonderful proof that we are more than nature, more than biological – was created for a purpose by God, even though same sex attraction or romance most definitely was not…
I’m just not sure that proving what is purposeful or not in nature could ever be an exact science, even if purpose in nature were demonstrated.

The other irony I see – human reproduction is indeed imperfect, flawed in that sense. If its purpose is to produce offspring, it does not always fulfill that purpose. In fact, it often fails at it. Openness to conceiving life is almost another matter; if the natural function were perfect, it would always conceive life, just as the ingesting of food almost always leads to digestion. How much imperfection in the natural act of procreation was intended by God, and how much has to do with the proposed inevitability of the imperfectness/state of privation that exists in created nature, is a good question (God, presumably, did not create nature as perfect because he wanted “it” to be free, and freedom is the ability to manifest imperfection; God is presumably perfect yet – in human terms – possibly not free ).

Yet heterosexual contact, though imperfect (with flaws, in a theistic sense) is still morally acceptable, whereas heterosexual contact is considered fundamentally imperfect, fundamentally flawed. On the other hand, appreciating a sunset serves no clear biological purpose at all, yet is not flawed, is in fact wholesome and good…

All of these distinctions seem to depend on a “particular way of looking at things” – tilting one’s head 45 degrees, let’s say. For those of us whose heads are tilted at 47 degrees, or perhaps 25 degrees, it just seems like one particular way of looking at things. That’s really how I often feel – here’s one way of looking at it, one particular way of seeing it. One reading of nature. Others, of course, will see it differently (including those who see homosexuality as nature’s way of “intending” to rein in male on male aggression and bloodshed).

 

[polytropos]

I don’t see being as good, or not good; being is. You say that it is human consciousness that separates being and goodness and I say that it is human consciousness that originated the concept of good in the first place Human beings originated the concept of being, as well – but not the reality of being, the thing itself.

With “good”, I am not convinced that we are talking about “the thing itself”; rather, I see it as an emotional appraisal or value judgment. Indeed, I am incapable of speaking of good in a way that is completely divorced either from emotion or subjective judgment.

I don’t really see how this contradicts what I have been saying. Reality is composed of beings, and goodness is a way of looking at those beings. The argument is not really trying to divorce goodness from human appraisals; it is trying to contextualize those appraisals in terms of what things are. If you say something is good, it is because it is in such a way that it is desirable. Hence “good,” which we both seem to agree is conceptual, is a way of looking at being. I think this is a necessary common ground between those who take a more formal Aristotelian approach and those who take a more empiricist approach. Where we would differ is whether the appraisal of good can be objectively right or wrong, and whether certain things can “be” in an objectively better way than others.

Take an amoeba. It undergoes a mutation that will prevent it from reproducing. Is it then worse than other amoebae? Objectively so? Whether or not you or I observe it? I would personally be hard pressed to say that there is no sense in which the mutation has made the amoeba less good.

If I saw off your leg, is the detraction from your goodness purely subjective and conventional? In my opinion, no.

Perhaps the staunchest empiricist would be required to disagree, though.

I understand your DNA example more metaphorically, using purpose in a metaphorical sense, “purpose” with quotation marks. The heart functions in such a way that it pumps blood; however, the heart does not have a purpose of pumping blood. Maybe it is language that is tripping up the conversation here. Function does not presuppose intentionality but purpose cannot be divorced from conscious intentionality, and a heart muscle is not known to have it.

Here I disagree. To say that body parts have “functions” is to indulge in intentionality-laden language. It may be more of a shorthand for those committed to denying intentionality, though; for instance, by “the heart’s function is to pump blood,” an empiricist might really mean, “the heart has come to exist in such a way that it pumps blood because its doing so more efficiently led to differential reproductive success of extant organisms’ ancestors.”

But to say that the heart has an irreducible function is to say that it has intentionality and is directed toward a particular activity by virtue of its nature. (This directionality is not, of course, conscious, since the heart is not, as you say, motivated to pump blood; it just does by its nature. Which is why Aristotle and Aquinas did not take intentionality or final causality to be fundamentally conscious, although the early moderns largely mischaracterized it as such.)

Agreed. If nature has a divine architect, then it does indeed make sense to speak of a purpose for everything in nature, just like the parts of a car do indeed have a purpose, vis-a-vis their conscious maker, and not merely a de facto “function.”

I don’t think the situation is really different. Suppose a person who has never seen a car comes across one. It just seems like a pile of metal, rubber, and plastic at first, but after studying it for months, he starts to figure out how it works (which is perfectly conceivable). He does not know anything about the creator of the car. He has not been told that the car is supposed to help you get from one place to another. He does not have the schematics for the engine or anything else. But he still figures out what the purpose of each piece is in the whole and, indeed, might figure out what the whole was for in the first place.

Or, since he does not know anything about the creator of the car, should he suppose that its pieces do not have any purpose, and any purpose is a matter of seeming?

There is a distinction in philosophy of mind between intrinsic intentionality, derived intentionality, and as-if intentionality. Derived intentionality, naturally, must be derived from something. As-if intentionality must be an illusion of intentionality, which is to say that it is not any sort of intentionality (but, since it seems to be intentionality, it can only be viewed as an illusion of intentionality by a conscious human with intentional states). So I think one would be required, on the empiricist view, to deny that even a car’s parts have any sort of intentionality.

 

[polytropos]

I see this as dependent on a particular point of view, a particular way of looking at it – from a certain point of view, anger is the privation of love. From another point of view, love is the privation of anger. It becomes analogical to, “from a certain point of view, the glass is half empty; from another, the glass is half full.” I see this as a more mental understanding of things, actually. Of course, all of these judgments depend on what one considers a “departure from what is proper” versus what is improper.

To reiterate, it is a “more mental understanding of things,” since the good is a conceptual distinction.

I would argue, though, that it is not really a “glass half full, glass half empty” sort of issue, since there is an asymmetry between the fulfillment of what is proper and the lack of what is proper (which is evident in noting that a privation of love could be a presence of anger or a presence of indifference). And this is true whether there is an “epistemological gap” or not. For instance, while it is conceivable for something to be fully good (to completely instantiate what it ought to be), it is impossible for something to be fully evil (to not at all instantiate what it ought to be), since the latter would entail that it is not what it is (and this is, of course, true even if our appraisal of the good were completely subjective).

In this case, one would have to determine what moral obligations entail, and whether nature imposes moral obligations, or whether those moral obligations come from either: a. human societies alone; or b. human societies as well as God.

Certainly. That is really more along the lines of natural law morality though. Moral goodness is a type of goodness, but it is not goodness as such (note the example previously of a human being: a human could be morally bad or could be bad as a result of having cancer). For now I am assuming that there is some moral goodness, although for the point of this argument (to defend the privation view of evil and the goodness of God), it isn’t much important what it is.

I would say that, on the Thomistic view at least, moral obligations come neither from human societies alone nor from human societies and God per se. We do not, for instance, have moral obligations because God dictates certain moral obligations. Moral obligations, rather, follow from what we are qua human beings. They are dependent on God insofar that He wills us to exist and (as Goodness Itself) can only will what is good, but He does not say, “Hm, I think I’ll make stealing bad.” Stealing is intrinsically bad as a result of what we are (according to forms which preexist in God’s intellect), not what God commands, and God can no more making stealing good than he can make a cat that is also a house.

Even when something like worship on Sundays is commanded as positive law, God is commanding it as a reminder of something we ought to be doing anyway. (Perhaps we would not worship on Sundays by default, but worship of Him would still be morally obligatory regardless of whether He commands it. There is also an issue of epistemology here, since we might be excused by not knowing that we had to worship God if He had not commanded it, but His commanding it is not what gives it its obligatory force.)

Human societies do not quite “produce” moral obligation either. Humans, as social animals, do have a moral obligation to obey just authorities, so when reasonable and just obligations have been imposed by society, they should be obeyed, but that is more part of another, related obligation that is natural to humans qua humans.

(These last few paragraphs are just clarifying divine command theory and natural law on the Thomistic view. They are all outside of the realm of this topic, which is focused on goodness as such rather than moral goodness in particular.)

 

[Portofino]

I
Perhaps the staunchest empiricist would be required to disagree, though…

I appreciate that line; yes, I’d have to admit to taking the more empiricist view of the matter, at least intellectually! (personally and emotionally, I would of course feel differently). Losing a limb is experienced as bad because one of the uses to which the limbs are put is ambulation – which is experienced as desirable, as good. Balance is another purpose to which having two limbs are put, and thus balance itself – and the means to it – is experienced as desirable, as a good. There is also the aesthetic aspect of it, of course – having two legs is considered not only normal, but aesthetically pleasing. And no one would want to have a pig’s snout for a nose, even assuming it “got the job done” in terms of breathing comfortably It just wouldn’t look right (because we’re not used to it, for one thing).

But I think that, In the ultimate scheme of things, at least from a more purely empirical view, i cannot prove that certain configurations of matter are better nor worse – they just are. Even simple versus complex does not imply of greater versus of lesser value, per se. I can’t prove that a living body is obectively better than a non-living body. If I say that a living body is preferable, then I cannot separate this from the question, “preferable to whom?” To a vulture or other scavenger, a non-living human body is preferable and, in that sense, good and desirable. It is certainly more useful to them.

I don’t think the situation is really different. Suppose a person who has never seen a car comes across one. It just seems like a pile of metal, rubber, and plastic at first, but after studying it for months, he starts to figure out how it works (which is perfectly conceivable). He does not know anything about the creator of the car. He has not been told that the car is supposed to help you get from one place to another. He does not have the schematics for the engine or anything else. But he still figures out what the purpose of each piece is in the whole and, indeed, might figure out what the whole was for in the first place…

I hope you won’t see this as cheating, on my part, but let’s follow the analogy of an Amerindian tribe (let’s say) who magically discovered a car in a tropical rain forest near the Amazon. Perhaps they spent a good amount of time just admiring the beauty of it (once they got over their fear). It’s a nice red color; it looks really aesthetically pleasing to them. That’s one use to which they’ve put it – they appreciate the sheer beauty of the thing. Then they figure out how to open the door and they sit in it – it has a seat! They are just hanging out on the comfortable cushion of the seat, and a number of other uses arises – they can just sit comfortably in it and have a conversation; or they can lie down and sleep on it. In fact, during a moderate rainstorm, they even find that it is a good source of shelter – it protects from the rain. A privileged few have slept overnight in the car, and it thus becomes a habitation of sorts. One of them has hidden underneath it, while playing hide and seek; it proved to be a good hiding place, and a good place from which to see others without being seen. Now let’s say, again according to some a priori magic, that an engineer or mechanic pays them a visit and shows that you can actually drive this thing and, while you are driving, you can play music! So he shows them how to drive this thing – how, in fact, the mechanic’s principal purpose in creating this car was so it could be used for driving. That’s all fine and good.

Now, would the car be misused by those who just decided to sit in it, sometimes, not driving anywhere? Perhaps they liked to turn on the radio and just listen to the car’s music. Or perhaps they liked to take a nap on the car’s seat, or – if they had a fight with their wives – lie down on it and use it as a bed, a place to “crash” overnight. Or perhaps they’re using it to take shelter from the rain; or, perhaps, to simply study it’s component parts, without actually driving it. Are they misusing the car? Would the engineer take umbrage to the fact that they are using the car for a purpose other than that for which it was principally intended? Another engineer could say, “a car has as many uses as human ingenuity can come up with, although it was primarily designed to be used as a vehicle, as a means of transportation. But no, you’re misuing the car in separating its “transportative” aspects from whatever other use for it you are able to find.”

I’m using this analogy, of course, as a way of question whether, even if nature did have an intended purpose, whether that intended purpose is morally normative (with the obvious connection being with the idea of misusing sexuality, for example).

I’m not an “Eastern religion” guy (far from it), but this reminds me of a Taoist text by a teacher called “Chuag Tzu.” Writes one commentator, “one key to Chuang Tzu’s use of Hui Shih’s relativism is his application to the concept of “use.” Everything is useful from some position or other and there are some positions from which even the most useful thing is useless. Chuang Tzu illustrates this theme with his famous parables of the huge “useless” tree that, consequently, never got chopped down and the huge gourd that was useless to eat, but might make a good boat.”

 

[belorg]

etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=God&searchmode=none

God:

"Old English god “supreme being, deity; the Christian God; image of a god; godlike person,” from Proto-Germanic *guthan (cf. Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch god, Old High German got, German Gott, Old Norse guð, Gothic guþ), from PIE *ghut- “that which is invoked” (cf. Old Church Slavonic zovo “to call,” Sanskrit huta- “invoked,” an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- “to call, invoke.”

But some trace it to PIE *ghu-to- “poured,” from root *gheu- “to pour, pour a libation” (source of Greek khein “to pour,” also in the phrase khute gaia “poured earth,” referring to a burial mound; see found (v.2)). “Given the Greek facts, the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound” [Watkins]. Cf. also Zeus.

Not related to good. Originally a neuter noun in Germanic, the gender shifted to masculine after the coming of Christianity. Old English god probably was closer in sense to Latin numen. A better word to translate deus might have been Proto-Germanic *ansuz, but this was used only of the highest deities in the Germanic religion, and not of foreign gods, and it was never used of the Christian God. It survives in English mainly in the personal names beginning in Os-. "

Good:

"Old English god (with a long “o”) “virtuous; desirable; valid; considerable,” probably originally “having the right or desirable quality,” from Proto-Germanic *gothaz (cf. Old Norse goðr, Dutch goed, Old High German guot, German gut, Gothic goþs), originally “fit, adequate, belonging together,” from PIE root *ghedh- “to unite, be associated, suitable” (cf. Old Church Slavonic godu “pleasing time,” Russian godnyi “fit, suitable,” Old English gædrian “to gather, to take up together”). As an expression of satisfaction, from early 15c.; of children, “well-behaved,” by 1690s. "

I was just going to post this as a response to Qoeleth, thank you for this.

 

[belorg]

This does not follow. The privations in creation are not caused by Pure Act; they are instances of nothing, things failing to instantiate their forms where Pure Act does (and in fact can do nothing but) will that things go to their natural ends.

I am currently building a garden shed. Where the I plan the door to be, I left out some bricks. By your logic, I did not “cause” the gap in the wall because I did not cut it out after the wall was finished.

 

[Portofino]

I was just going to post this as a response to Qoeleth, thank you for this.

Welcome

 

[belorg]

God could not be selfish. Selfishness is an emotion, which would imply that God needs something (like, for instance, the worship of human beings). That is, of course, nonsense, because God needs nothing and can be improved by our worship in our no way.

God cannot be cruel because he causes and wills no evil.

And that’s why God cannot possibly create anything.

BTW, “God cannot be cruel because he causes and wills no evil” is circular.

 

[polytropos]

I am currently building a garden shed. Where the I plan the door to be, I left out some bricks. By your logic, I did not “cause” the gap in the wall because I did not cut it out after the wall was finished.

You did not cause the gap; you did not put what is not there, there.

 

[polytropos]

BTW, “God cannot be cruel because he causes and wills no evil” is circular.

I’m pointing out that the proposition “God is cruel” is false because God does not will evil, which follows from what God is.

 

[tonyrey]

I think “good at being cruel and selfish” is a form of misplaced expertise rather than a perfection.

Anyone who believes expertise in being cruel and selfish is not misplaced is either mentally unbalanced or morally retarded. Do you disagree? If so why?

 

[polytropos]

But I think that, In the ultimate scheme of things, at least from a more purely empirical view, i cannot prove that certain configurations of matter are better nor worse – they just are.

This is where I will have to disagree. For now, suffice it to say that I do think that the amoeba which cannot reproduce is objectively worse than the amoeba that can, and that DNA has intrinsic intentionality and end-directedness. These are broad topics, however, that would have to be discussed elsewhere. (As I’ll explain below, they are also not quite essential to drawing the conclusion that God is good.)

I can’t prove that a living body is obectively better than a non-living body. If I say that a living body is preferable, then I cannot separate this from the question, “preferable to whom?” To a vulture or other scavenger, a non-living human body is preferable and, in that sense, good and desirable. It is certainly more useful to them.

Remember that what is good for the fox might be bad for the hen. So what is bad to a body (to be non-living) is good to a vulture, who might get a meal. The “dilemma” here is one that the conception of good I’ve provided embraces.

Perhaps they spent a good amount of time just admiring the beauty of it (once they got over their fear). It’s a nice red color; it looks really aesthetically pleasing to them. That’s one use to which they’ve put it – they appreciate the sheer beauty of the thing. Then they figure out how to open the door and they sit in it – it has a seat! They are just hanging out on the

comfortable cushion of the seat, and a number of other uses arises – they can just sit comfortably in it and have a conversation; or they can lie down and sleep on it. In fact, during a moderate rainstorm, they even find that it is a good source of shelter – it protects from the rain. A privileged few have slept overnight in the car, and it thus becomes a habitation of sorts. One of them has hidden underneath it, while playing hide and seek; it proved to be a good hiding place, and a good place from which to see others without being seen. Now let’s say, again according to some a priori magic, that an engineer or mechanic pays them a visit and shows that you can actually drive this thing and, while you are driving, you can play music! So he shows them how to drive this thing – how, in fact, the mechanic’s principal purpose in creating this car was so it could be used for driving. That’s all fine and good.

Now, would the car be misused by those who just decided to sit in it, sometimes, not driving anywhere?
I’ve bolded the things that you say the tribe does with the car (including some other, functionally related words, ie. the cushion is comfortable). Besides hiding under the car, virtually all of these are intended by the car’s designer. The car was made to be aesthetically appealing. The handle was made to open the door. The cushions were made to be sat on (and were made comfortable for that purpose). The car has a top for a reason (to provide shelter).

So by and large, the intentions of the designer are evident and knowable. Of course, if you were so motivated, I’m sure you could come up with a parallel example where some created object is used in a way it was not at all intended, but it is interesting that here, the use matches the design almost exactly.

I’m using this analogy, of course, as a way of question whether, even if nature did have an intended purpose, whether that intended purpose is morally normative (with the obvious connection being with the idea of misusing sexuality, for example).

In this topic I intend to advance an “epistemologically lite” account of the good. Particularly, I think it makes sense to characterize good (as convertible with such and such a state of being) and evil (as a privation of good) whether we know what is objectively good or not. In that sense, if there is objective good (even if we do know it), what I have said in this topic would show that it is inconceivable that God should not be Goodness Itself (since He has no lacks), with goodness as his proper effect.

That much is shown whether one thinks we can know what is actually good or not. I do not concede that we cannot know what is actually good. I think that we can know quite a bit about what is good, but this discussion, being as light as possible on formal and final causes, is not meant to defend a full natural law view of morality (or a view of moral goodness in particular), so I will not comment on the homosexuality issue in any detail.

(This will also be my last post on this topic.)

 

[Qoeleth]

etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=God&searchmode=none

God:

"Old English god “supreme being, deity; the Christian God; image of a god; godlike person,” from Proto-Germanic *guthan (cf. Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch god, Old High German got, German Gott, Old Norse guð, Gothic guþ), from PIE *ghut- “that which is invoked” (cf. Old Church Slavonic zovo “to call,” Sanskrit huta- “invoked,” an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- “to call, invoke.”

But some trace it to PIE *ghu-to- “poured,” from root *gheu- “to pour, pour a libation” (source of Greek khein “to pour,” also in the phrase khute gaia “poured earth,” referring to a burial mound; see found (v.2)). “Given the Greek facts, the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound” [Watkins]. Cf. also Zeus.

Not related to good. Originally a neuter noun in Germanic, the gender shifted to masculine after the coming of Christianity. Old English god probably was closer in sense to Latin numen. A better word to translate deus might have been Proto-Germanic *ansuz, but this was used only of the highest deities in the Germanic religion, and not of foreign gods, and it was never used of the Christian God. It survives in English mainly in the personal names beginning in Os-. "

Good:

"Old English god (with a long “o”) “virtuous; desirable; valid; considerable,” probably originally “having the right or desirable quality,” from Proto-Germanic *gothaz (cf. Old Norse goðr, Dutch goed, Old High German guot, German gut, Gothic goþs), originally “fit, adequate, belonging together,” from PIE root *ghedh- “to unite, be associated, suitable” (cf. Old Church Slavonic godu “pleasing time,” Russian godnyi “fit, suitable,” Old English gædrian “to gather, to take up together”). As an expression of satisfaction, from early 15c.; of children, “well-behaved,” by 1690s. "

Remember, PIE is not an attested language, but a hypothetical construct (as is proto-Germanic, for that matter). I think you are putting to much confidence in it. In such cases, the best approach is to refer to the earliest attested uses of the languages in question, rather than to extrapolate hypothetically, and risk arriving at words which may never have existed.

As for your proposed etymologies of the German forms of “God”, I am quite amazed that you have overlook the most obvious one, from “Odin, Wodin, Godan”.

The earliest attested use (as far as I am aware) of a cognate “good” (‘godan’) I am aware of is Gothic, (see Codex Argenteus, Matt 4:45), where is used as a translation for “justus”, in opposition to ‘ubilan’ (evil). “Sunnon seina unranneith ana ubilans jah godans”.

Then the same word as the Gothic for ‘good’ is used for name of the Germanic Supreme Deity 4C Latin documents contemporary, e.g: "Tunc Ambri et Assi, hoc est duces Wandalorum, rogaverunt Godan, ut daret eis super Winniles victoriam. Respondit Godan dicens: “Quos sol surgente antea videro, ipsis dabo victoriam”.

And then your idea that the Anglo-Saxon “Gud” could better be understood as a translation of the Latin “Numen”, than “Deus”. Sorry, but I don’t see it at all. The earliest attested Anglo-Saxon usages of the “Gud” are all more or less explicitely equivalent to “Deus”. Do you have any instances in Anglo-Saxon in mind in which “Gud” is used in the sense of “Numen” rather than “Deus”?

Well, I am not a linguist, but I do think we need to confine our discussion of etymologies to actually attested usages.

 

[Portofino]

I’ve bolded the things that you say the tribe does with the car (including some other, functionally related words, ie. the cushion is comfortable). Besides hiding under the car, virtually all of these are intended by the car’s designer. The car was made to be aesthetically appealing. The handle was made to open the door. The cushions were made to be sat on (and were made comfortable for that purpose). The car has a top for a reason (to provide shelter).

True enough, although I was also thinking of the eventuality where they need to “break the car down” and use the metal to form weapons (like Revolutionary soldiers melting down statues to make bullets).

They could also turn the car into a house – again, taking it apart and using the raw materials (many restaurants in parts of New York used to be bank vaults – the customers think it is “cool” to dine in what used to be the vault of a bank).

With the sex example, of course, one could say that pleasure was indeed intended for the sexual act. What they would maintain is not proven is that it is immoral to separate the pleasure from the procreative aspect, just as I’m arguing that it’s not obviously (or, in fact, is obviously not) immoral to separate some of the secondary uses from a car, from its intended primary use. If you never use the car to drive, for the simple reason that you have no interest in doing so (but you just like to sit in it and listen to music), that is entirely valid.

But I agree, this is straying from the original points you were making. What I would say is that the God you describe sounds like the sort of God who would not necessarily say, “you have freedom but you do not have the moral right to use anything in nature, or your body, for anything but its intended purpose.” For this God that is not human, and does not have any moral responsibilities, it is not clear to me that he imposes *any moral obligations *, either. But that we, human beings, impose moral obligations on each other, is something about which I agree.

 

[Portofino]

As for your proposed etymologies of the German forms of “God”, I am quite amazed that you have overlook the most obvious one, from “Odin, Wodin, Godan”.

I wish I had such knowledge of languages. No, that is a quotation from an online “Etymological dictionary.” I would presume that most of the authors have a doctorate in linguistics, something which I cannot claim for myself.

then your idea that the Anglo-Saxon “Gud” could better be understood as a translation of the Latin “Numen”, than “Deus”.

Again, I wish I could take the credit for that. To tell you the truth, I had long assumed that “God” and “good” were cognates and had been disappointed, myself, to read that this was chalked up to coincidence. It was a pet notion of mine (nor was it the only Germanic word that I found significantly similar — Freund (friend) and Freude (joy) was another).

Of course, the Germanic languages are just one language family, so even if God and good were cognates in those languages, they certainly are not in the Slavic or Romance branches of Indo-European (Deus – God; bonus – good; malus – bad). In those languages where they really and truly are not cognates – with no dispute – this does not in itself cast doubt on whether God is good!

And these Germanic tribes were pagans, after all, so the God they were talking about would have been their pre-Christian designation for the supreme being… And what I did find of great interest is that the word was a neuter noun, in pre-Christian Germanic times; then, after the encounter with Christianity, it was changed to a masculine noun, to match the Judeo-Christian conception of God as a He.

Proving that the first cause is a He would be a quite difficult undertaking, though Philosophically, there are no grounds for use of the pronoun He (the great mother could have given birth to the universe). Obviously, use of the pronoun He is a product of Judeo-Christian revelation, not pure philosophical reasoning.