Boethius's Arguments for the existence of God

[IWantGod]

And remember, since he asserted something without evidence, we can reject it without evidence. Just ignore him until he proves his claim.

Some claims are so preposterous they’re hard to ignore. But you are right.

 

[HarryStotle]

ServusDei1:

No relaible ‘“prove it?” Substantiate that claim. I don’t believe it.

You really aren’t very bright, are you. The argument boils down to this, either there’s an objective standard for perfection which you refer to as God, or perfection is arbitrary. Since I can’t prove that there’s no God, we have an impasse. Which is where it appears that we’re going to have to call this discussion finished.

So, if the argument “boils down” to there is an objective standard we call God or “perfection is arbitrary,” it is you who have to own the implications of the ‘arbitrary’ position.

Think about what that means and see if you are truly ready to do so.

Courage, honesty, loyalty, respect, civility, etc., are, then, for YOU not qualitatively different from cowardice, dishonesty, disloyalty, cruelty, barbarism, etc.

Now that would seem an odd admission on your part. In fact, it is tantamount to claiming immorality is, qualitatively speaking, no different from morality.

If human perfection, as Aristotle went to great pains to show, is the practice of human virtues like courage, then imperfection would be a failing of virtue. For you, since virtues are “arbitrary,” courage and cowardice are not qualitatively distinct. That, I submit, makes you less than human, if you sincerely believe it to be true and practice what you preach. Would you then laud the cowards as you do the courageous? Or think no more nor less of cowards than you do of the brave? Think no more nor less of rapists or murderers than you do of respectful, civil, law-abiding individuals? Do you?

That is what you are left with to own. Do you?

 

[Gorgias]

I don’t think that the ides of being greater or lesser holds any merit

I think that’s a position that’s not well-thought-out. Do you not have preferences? Does society not value one over the other? Can we not say that we approach objectivity, even in things that are felt subjectively by the individual, by a sense of shared values?

If so, then ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ do, in fact, have meaning – and value and merit to us as humans.

(At the very least, I think we can posit value to human life as an objective ‘greater good’.)

I just have to find the time to do it. Actually, it’s more about finding a sufficient reason to do it.

Yes. If there’s nothing that you claim has value, then it’s difficult to see how you can be motivated to do a whole lot of anything…

 

[Gorgias]

Which means that when it comes to making choices, I don’t really concern myself with what others will think, or what “God” will think. I do what I do because it is in keeping with what I am.

Ahh, but you said that you don’ t have preferences! How can you ‘choose’, then? (Unless you’re saying that you always choose arbitrarily, or believe that you simply act deterministically! Either way… you’re being inconsistent, here…)

 

[IWantGod]

This is just a re-hashing of Anselm’s MGB - Maximally Great Being. “Perfection”, or “greatness” is an abstraction, and it cannot be defined in an objective manner. There is no way to define a “perfect” evening, or a “maximally great vacation” or a “best possible sportsman”. One reason is that “greatness” or “perfection” are composite attributes, having several “sub-attributes”, which are subjectively selected by the apologists. Of course God is also supposed to be perfectly “simple”, which precludes the possibility of having any “complex” attributes. Moreover, some of the attributes are contradictory, like in “the perfect bullet can penetrate any shield”, while “the perfect shield can withstand any bullet”

Boethius does not argue that there is such a thing as an objectively perfect sportsman, or that there is a perfect bullet. These ideas involve artificial goal direction made up by humans. I agree that artificial meaning cannot be defined in objective terms because it’s make-belief and not discovered in reality. But to argue that this counts as evidence that there is no perfect being is a fallacy because you haven’t disproved the concept of perfection by pointing out that there are ideas which cannot be objectively defined in that sense.

In the first place, when Boethius speaks of imperfection versus perfection he is not talking about artificially constructed meanings. Also he argues that we never truly encounter perfection in a physical sense. And neither is his argument the same as Anselm’s ontological argument. He basically said that if we can identify an imperfect act of reality, that is only possible if there is such a thing as a perfect act of reality. It’s an inductive argument. Also, perfection is not a composite. Perfection is not made up of imperfect things and neither does Boethius claim such a thing.

If you wish to argue that we cannot logically identify an imperfect act of reality, that is fine, and even if we couldn’t that would not be a disproof of perfection.

At the very least please get Boethius’s argument right first before criticizing it. Straw-men are a real bore.

 

[HarryStotle]

This is just a re-hashing of Anselm’s MGB - Maximally Great Being. “Perfection”, or “greatness” is an abstraction, and it cannot be defined in an objective manner. There is no way to define a “perfect” evening, or a “maximally great vacation” or a “best possible sportsman”. One reason is that “greatness” or “perfection” are composite attributes, having several “sub-attributes”, which are subjectively selected by the apologists.

Actually, there is a way that the greatness or perfection, of all of those composite attributes you speak of can be attributed to one MGB, and that would be if the MGB is the source and cause of all perfections. If they all derive from the MGB, then they come from the MGB.

There is no logical constraint that forces some who argue for a MGB to suggest that Being is a being or one being, existentially on the same level as all other beings. MGB proponents would make the claim that the MGB is Being Itself, or the Actus Purus, the Pure Act of Being Itself. I.e, the source of all perfections

Of course God is also supposed to be perfectly “simple”, which precludes the possibility of having any “complex” attributes. Moreover, some of the attributes are contradictory, like in “the perfect bullet can penetrate any shield”, while “the perfect shield can withstand any bullet”, so no being (or Being) can have such “perfection”.

The difference would be between claiming God must be composite, i.e., have composite attributes, because he can bring about composite attributes, and claiming that the power to create or bring about can be exercised in various ways, including, in God’s case, ex nihilo. No, God need not have arms in order to create creatures with arms, just as human beings do not need to be silicon chips to make silicon chips.

As to the “contradictory” attributes claim, it still relies upon superficialities to make logical inferences. Omnipotence would cover both the perfect shield and perfect bullet examples. Unless you want to trample through the muck of “Can God make a thing heavier than he can lift,” nonsense your understanding of the ideas involved here seem somewhat limited.

The Church proclaimed fideism to be a heresy. You may want to read John Paul II’s On Faith and Reason,

Finally, the hoped-for result: “and this is what we call God”, is not just without any information, but in dire contradiction to the God od the Bible. As the saying went: “pretty much everyone believed in God until some philosophers tried to prove it”. Better to stick to faith, and leave reason out of it.

Says the man who tries to reason his readers out of reason by using reason.

The “saying” you laud is nonsensical. You merely need to read some of the best proofs of God’s existence to see that.

Pretty much everyone still believes in God in some sense. The fact that religious practice has dwindled in recent years isn’t because some philosophers tried to prove it but because good philosophy was traded for sophistry and appeals to emotion.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Think about what that means and see if you are truly ready to do so.

Courage, honesty, loyalty, respect, civility, etc., are, then, for YOU not qualitatively different from cowardice, dishonesty, disloyalty, cruelty, barbarism, etc.

Now that would seem an odd admission on your part. In fact, it is tantamount to claiming immorality is, qualitatively speaking, no different from morality.

If human perfection, as Aristotle went to great pains to show, is the practice of human virtues like courage, then imperfection would be a failing of virtue. For you, since virtues are “arbitrary,” courage and cowardice are not qualitatively distinct. That, I submit, makes you less than human, if you sincerely believe it to be true and practice what you preach. You would then laud the cowards as you do the courageous? Or think nor more nor less of cowards than you do of the brave? Think no more nor less of rapists or murderers than you do of respectful, civil, law-abiding individuals? Do you?

That is what you are left with to own. Do you?

Absolutely yes!

Qualitatively, I don’t believe that courage can be said to be any greater or lesser than cowardice. You see a qualitative difference…I don’t. You think that that makes me less than human, but of course I don’t think that the ideas of being greater or lesser holds any merit. So for you to think that I’m less than human is for me, a meaningless concept.

I am what I am…and this is true for everything, they are what they are.

Well, it might be a meaningless concept until it becomes… well … meaningful.

Do you have children?

Suppose your son came to you and said he is planning to make his way through life by lying, cheating, stealing, raping, and murdering. Since the ideas of being greater or less perfect or moral hold no merit, he pronounces that he is just being what he is meant to be.

So to start his new and enlightened and free existence, he begins by robbing you at gunpoint, and taking your car, and beating you senseless.

To be consistent with your position that being more or less human is, for you, a “meaningless concept,” your response ought to be, it seems, to respond, not with moral opprobrium, but with agreement. “Son, I am happy that you have discovered who you are meant to be! You are what you are!”

Very enlightened of you!

God and the moral universe may not exactly agree with you.