If I can find an answer to these questions, I will turn back to religion

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Well if you’re going to deliberately misrepresent what I’m saying, then there’s not much point in continuing. It seems there are very few people on this forum who are interested in actually discussing stuff. It’s mainly cheap attempts to score points.
“Cheap attempts”? “Deliberate misrepresentation”? Wait a second – you’re the one who claimed that the perception of a tree actually counted for something… and then in the next breath you admit that perceptions aren’t reliable!

That’s not a cheap shot! That’s pointing out to you that you need to work on your argument, because you yourself contradict its validity! (That’s called “debate” or “discussion”, in case you were wondering… and it’s something that you recognize that happens around here.)
 
So if that moral obligation applies to us, why not to God? A hint: “because he’s God” would be a fallacious answer.
No, it really isn’t. Let’s look at an analogous example:

Do the moral obligations that apply to you, likewise apply to your pet dog? Why not? “Because he’s a dog” is a reasonable – and not fallacious! – answer. Fido isn’t human, and therefore, human obligations do not apply to him. There’s no way you can call that ‘special pleading’!

So, by the same token, we answer “because God isn’t a human” – that’s why human obligations do not apply to Him!
 
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Wesrock:
Is it special pleading to say that what it means to be a good human being doesn’t apply to a good triangle? Or that while it is a bad human who does not care for its own young, types of fish that do not do the same for their own young aren’t therefore bad fish? There’s no special pleading in either example, we’re just avoiding absurd claims of a particular level of universality.
Sorry, but that’s not a valid argument, unless you’re claiming that God has the mental and physical capacity of a fish or a triangle. You’re right about one thing, the comparison is absurd. I can tell you exactly why a triangle wouldn’t intervene if another triangle were about to murder someone. I can tell you exactly why a fish wouldn’t intervene if another fish were about to gun down a child.
The issue seems to be that you think this is about scale. The answer is really that morality isn’t a universal law in the way you’re trying to cast it, it’s simply part of what it means to be a good human being. What it is to be a good triangle is different than what it is to be a good fish which is different than what it is to be a good human being which is different than what it is to be Pure Actuality, subsistent being itself.
I presume you think that God is vastly more intelligent, empathetic, powerful etc. than humans.
No. God is not vastly more intelligent, empathetic, powerful, etc… than humans, not in a philosophical context. He’s not less in either category, nor is he equal to. God doesn’t have intelligence, or have empathy, or have power.
 
So it really does feel like you’re saying “God isn’t bound by our ideals of goodness, because he’s God.” Which is special pleading, like it or not.
And it really feels like you’re conceiving of God as some superman living on Mt. Olympus who’s intellect, empathy, power, and such is simply much greater than ours on a scale, perhaps at the end of the scale, but still on the scale.
So really, you are operating on some premise of goodness that is informing your logic in thinking it’s special pleading, and I’d like to examine what exactly that is.
I think you’re trying to obfuscate the issue here. My question is very simple: if we are compelled to act to prevent our children performing harm to others, and we consider that a good act - why isn’t God compelled in the same way? Trying to pick apart what I think “goodness” is, is simply avoiding answering the question. Which, with respect, is what happens every time a Christian is confronted with the question of why an all-powerful God fails to protect innocent people.
It’s not so much avoiding the question as preparing for it. It’s easy if I spend multiple posts explaining a conception of goodness and then for you to just dismiss it without actually bothering to explain how your conception is coherent or how it even leads to an accusation of special pleading.
Is God good? Is he all-knowing? Is he all-powerful?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Could he stop someone committing an act of evil? If the answer to those four questions is “Yes,” then why doesn’t he prevent these evil acts, the same way your or I would?
Yes, though it’s phrased in a way that kind of misunderstands God’s relation to Creation. I’ve another post I prepared on a different device. I’ll post that momentarily.
 
And it really feels like you’re conceiving of God as some superman living on Mt. Olympus who’s intellect, empathy, power, and such is simply much greater than ours on a scale, perhaps at the end of the scale, but still on the scale.
I really think that this is the disconnect that @FredBloggs is having. If God is ‘like’ us, but just bigger and better, then it would be ‘special pleading’ to suggest that the same standards don’t apply. The problem is that “bigger and better” isn’t what we’re claiming. Fundamentally different is what we’re claiming about God, and that’s why there isn’t one common scale.
 
@FredBloggs

Post 1 of 3

At this point, I suppose I should speak more directly to what goodness actually is. We call things good quote liberally. “This is good food,” one might say. One could also say “This food is good for you.” Or “You’ve drawn a good triangle.” Or “this is a good dog.” Or “Fred is a good golfer.” (edit: the choice of the name Fred was coincidental) Or even “Sarah is a good person.” A good triangle is obviously different than a good person, so we are not using the word “good” in a univocal sense. But I would object to the claim that we are therefore using the word “good” in an equivocal sense, for it is clear to me that in each case there is some universality to our use of the word “good,” some similitude. Rather, when we use the term “good” for all these things, each use of the word good is being used in a way analogous to the way the word good is being used in the other phrases. Analogous does not mean metaphorical or non-literal, either. It just mean it’s not exactly the same as it would be in a univocal sense but neither is it in all ways unlike as it would be in an equivocal sense.

Let’s look at some of these examples more closely. What would we generally mean when we tell someone that they’ve drawn a good triangle? We mean that it better fits our knowledge of what a triangle essentially should be: It is a closed shape with three straight sides and which has three angles adding up to 180 degrees in Euclidean geometry. We would recognize a triangle drawn with a straight edge and sharpened pencil as being good while a triangle drawn freehand with fingerpaints on the deck may be “not so good” or even bad.

Let’s consider Fred the good golfer now. When we recognize a good golfer, we recognize that man or woman as having the skills necessary to succeed at the game of golf. James may lack the same skills, and James may be what we call a bad golfer.

The goodness of a thing, therefore, is whether it has the qualities that the ideal example of that thing should have. A thing is not good insofar as it is lacking in those qualities. Badness is a lack (or privation) of some good that should be found in a thing given what it is. I would not say Fred is a bad golfer because he is lacking in the quality of “triangularity.” That is neutral or irrelevant to whether or not he’s a good golfer. Likewise, James may be lacking in the skills to be a good golfer, but that has no bearing on whether or not he’s a good surgeon or even a good person.

What we call morality is not ad hoc. It is also not some higher law existing above and beyond us. It is just one facet of goodness as a whole, particularly a facet of goodness of human beings.
 
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Post 2 of 3

Moral goodness is not the only type of goodness that applies to humans. Certainly our medical and health fields are focused on maintaining or restoring proper physiological functions to person, as well as emotional and mental health. But moral goodness is the subject of your objection so we’ll focus on that. Moral goodness comes into play with the choices we make. When we make morally good choices, we make choices consistent with being a good (not just moral) example of what a human being should be. When we make morally evil choices, we’re lacking in ourselves or acting contrary to how a human being should act and what a human being should be. Are we choosing to act in accordance with “what it is to be human?” Are we actualizing/manifesting real “humanness” in ourselves?

Goodness is how much a thing actually instantiates the type of thing it is. It is inherent in what a thing is, not adhoc imposed upon it.

The Divine Nature is not a human being. It’s not special pleading to say “X is true for all things that are blue” and then say you (as in, you, not just speaking generically) are making a categorical error by trying to apply said statement to things that are red and accusing me of special pleading when I say it does not apply things that are red, it only applies to things that are blue.

I have alluded to, but haven’t really delved into the topic of philosophical realism and why that is preferable to an anti-realist philosophy. Given the length of this post already, I hope it can be understood that I’m not going to treat every background topic. Suffice it to say categories such as “triangles” or “human being” are seen as true, ontological categories and not just ad hoc categories that are just “in our heads” and have no basis in reality.

However, I think we need to speak more about God Himself, as what you’ve stated indicates you think if him as more of a super sky man (certainly closer to that than how Catholic theologians conceive him). As something that is just supposed to be the most powerful, most intelligent, most empathetic being alongside all other beings. That is very far removed from how we conceive God, insofar as it misses the concept entirely.

Consider a simulated reality being run on a computer. Your categorical error is in conceiving God as being the most powerful being in the simulation. God is more closely comparable to the computer that gives existence to that simulated reality itself. It’s level of reality transcends the type of reality that everything in the simulation belongs to. But even that analogy is limited, as of course in real life the computer then belongs as one being among many other beings. The computer has a complex composition, it changes and goes through time, it’s a particular type of thing, there are other computers. None of that is true with our concept of God. God has no complexity to his composition, does not have attributes, is unchanging and doesn’t move through sequences of moments, doesn’t think, doesn’t belong to any type of genus.
 
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I made a topic about the Argument from Motion (change) on these boards. I don’t want to get into discussing a proof of God here, but in the topic’s first eight posts I discuss the divine attributes, which may help shed some light on how we understand God:
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The Existence of God: The Argument From Motion Philosophy
Post 1 of 8 Introduction I’ve been tempted to write a full synopsis of a cosmological argument that not only demonstrates the existence of something such as an Unmoved Mover but also demonstrates that the Unmoved Mover must be unique, immutable, eternal, perfectly good, omnipotent, and omniscient for some time. However, I’ve until now never felt confident in my ability to make that a reality (and I still have my doubts). I have typed up everything below myself, though I am heavily indebted to …
God, the Unmoved Mover, simply is pure actuality. He has no potentials that could be actualized. Creation doesn’t add to him nor does it take away from him. He simply is existence itself, pure actuality. As there is no lack in him, he is perfectly good. That is what the theologians mean by that phrase. There is nothing be needs to do, or anything he could fail to do, that would change that. It doesn’t make sense of God to speak of him as a moral agent in the way humans are, where we can fail to be good humans. God has no moral obligations in the sense that we do. Not because of any special pleading, as this is perfectly consistent with and not claiming any exemptions from goodness (as a manner of instantiating being) described in detail above.

We need also to cover creation, for creating imperfect beings is like drawing a triangle and leaving a side incomplete. The two sides that were drawn are good. The privation of the triangle, the lack of a side, isn’t a positive creation, but simply something that hasn’t been created. Evil isn’t created in any positive sense, it’s an absence. God shines his light in some places brighter than others, and he has no obligation to shine it brighter anywhere than he has.

Now, we don’t stop here. God is self sufficient. He obtains absolutely nothing out of creating. Creating is a selfless act. He is Being Itself, and from his eternal will he wills that other things obtain their ends and fulfill what they are, and insofar as they do this they become so many similitudes of himself. He wills that things act according their natures. In permitting certain diversity into reality, he allows goods to exist that could no otherwise exist. You could not have the good of courage if no one was ever scared. Goods that come from rising above adversity, responding to crises, truly self sacrificing acts if love, these virtues could not exist in a world without evil. By permitting some evils, a greater diversity of goods that could not otherwise exist are part of that reality. Among this and other reasons there can be sufficient reason to permit evil, and God is under no obligation to do otherwise. While it may not sit well with you, it would require you to prove that there is no possible greater goodness that comes out of permitting evil to refute it.

We also have a God who, under no obligation, has formed covenants with men, is working with them to help them reach their ends, and who assumed flesh and entered into the world, suffered, and died for our sake. We have acts here that we commonly associate with human love, and acts of creation that are completely selfless for our own beatitude. That is a type of love. Not a human morality, but an intellectual willing the good of others without benefit to oneself.
 
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Also, I’ll just add that I started these posts Friday and worked on them Saturday and so haven’t kept up with recent events. I just didn’t have an opportunity to sit down and actually post them yesterday.
 
Now we’re getting to one of my favorite discussions about omnipotence: the notion of ‘middle knowledge’. To state the objection briefly: if God’s omnipotence doesn’t entail Him knowing counterfactuals, then God does not know the eternal destiny of a created human until it’s true that the human will be created. Therefore, it is not the case that God “brings humans into the world knowing that they will burn for eternity in hell.” And, therefore, without harm to the notion of His omniscence, he is not – by your definition - “responsible for that child burning for eternity in hell.” 😉
Good point. I’ve read a similar discussion in one of W. Norris Clarke’s works. I don’t often bring it up in my own posts, but yes, that is one possible interpretation of God’s omniscience. I appreciate you bringing it up and I’m quoting it to help re-present this position.
 
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Sbee0:
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mythbuster1:
In the absence of free will, right and wrong do not exist. Things simply are what they are, and there is no “should.” The very fact that you concede it is possible to change the justice system proves you believe free will exists.
Youre right, they do not exist. As I said, without free will, I am completely a victim of my circumstances or environment and not a perpetrator of any crime“hero” for anything I might do to benefit others. I do not and cannot possibly take any responsibility for it, as it was an inevitable outcome.

Kind of telling I think that no defending lawyer I know of has attempted to argue this in court and won 🙂
Are you really saying that free will must exist because the justice system depends on it?

————— Circumstantial evidence for sure but it’s quite compelling I’d say 🙂 How on earth can you prosecute me successfully for a crime if ultimately the roots of what made me do it are beyond my control and beyond my decision? Why hasn’t anyone argued this?

That’s like saying Unicorns must exist because I’m planning to ride one to work in the morning.
———- Not really, as there is no evidence whatsoever that unicorns exist. There is evidence of free will.
As a believer, the existence of free will is indisputably the reason why there is evil in the world, as the lack of such free will would be a logical contradiction to the existence of an all-good Almighty God.
I think that says it all. The only way you can justify your belief in a God that allows evil to occur, is to believe that free will is real.
———— God doesn’t cause evil, it’s the natural or eventual outcome of our decisions made by our freedom / free will.

You’re making a necessity of something, which prevents you from considering rationally whether that thing is actually real.

But even the existence of free will doesn’t give God a get-out. If free will exists, my son has free will. But if I believed he was about to gun down an innocent person, I would do everything I could to stop him. “Free will” doesn’t mean everybody can just do whatever they want and nobody else has a moral obligation to intervene.
——- I’m sure you would. It does sound like you have a very different understanding of what we mean by free will than I do. Free will to me is the fact you, me, and every human being has the complete freedom and ability to decide to do something irrespective of morality or consequence. We have that ability, we are not programmed.

So if that moral obligation applies to us, why not to God? A hint: “because he’s God” would be a fallacious answer.
————-Sounds like a red herring argument. We are talking about human free will. If you’re asking why God allows bad things to happen then I’m sure there are plenty of topics here and elsewhere that can help answer that question. Nobody has ever guaranteed to Christians or anyone else that life on earth would be perfect and without suffering. But the afterlife will be if we trust God. 🙂
 
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As far as I’m aware, the human race hasn’t charged me with defining justice assuming the existence of free will. Why does it fall to me to define it in the absence of free will?
Because you are the one asking the question about a justice system given your inserted pre-condition that there is no free will.
That’s either a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of what I’ve said. You’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater and assumed that an absence of free will means an absence of rational thought, and all actions being random. Which is nonsense.
If there is no free will then there is no understanding separate from material constrictions of scientific law based on the pre-existing set-up of the matter in your head. Other people will have other configurations.

See my explanation regarding free will and what this means to rational thought - What if Atheism is correct? | whatswrongwithatheism
How do you figure that?
Because when you have a justice system denying people’s free will then in not admitting free will you are certainly not going to respect the free will of others. This leads to authoritarianism.
Ok. What would you submit as evidence?
The very special place that consciousness plays in the role of the laws of physics at the quantum level.

Some of my background information can be found here - Is Materialism Scientifically Tenable? | whatswrongwithatheism

Happy to discuss these scientific experiments and what it means if you wish
 
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God do not ask mankind to worship because of that God need being worshiped. God need nothing but we need worships so God want us to worship Him. That is because of Grace and Love of God. In that case worshipping is a means and door to His Love and His Grace. God love His servant so God do not wish mankind to get away from His love. Worshipping is not a requirement for God but for human. God will not have a lack if people do not worship and by worshipping God not have an extra thing but human do.

For second question… I think free will solve our problem. And human also have a soul so the decision of any action is made by our soul(conscience which became manifest through our mind and intelligence and so through biological and chemical reactions). And free will has not a physical essence to be forced. I mean God do not force anyone during making decisions. When we make a decision by soul(mind and intelligence) so God create reaction in our biological body and then in physical world.
 
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FredBloggs:
Are you really saying that free will must exist because the justice system depends on it?
Circumstantial evidence for sure but it’s quite compelling I’d say 🙂 How on earth can you prosecute me successfully for a crime if ultimately the roots of what made me do it are beyond my control and beyond my decision? Why hasn’t anyone argued this?
Well, they have. Plenty of people have avoided retributive punishment because they had diminished responsibility.
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FredBloggs:
That’s like saying Unicorns must exist because I’m planning to ride one to work in the morning.
Not really, as there is no evidence whatsoever that unicorns exist. There is evidence of free will.
What evidence?
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FredBloggs:
I think that says it all. The only way you can justify your belief in a God that allows evil to occur, is to believe that free will is real.
God doesn’t cause evil, it’s the natural or eventual outcome of our decisions made by our freedom / free will.
I didn’t say God caused evil (although as the alleged creator of everything, he’s got some answering to do). But he allows it to happen when he could stop it. The only way you can reconcile that is to presuppose that free will must be real. That’s an unfounded conclusion. There’s no evidence for it, but it’s necessary for you to believe that your God is a good god. Like I said previously:
You’re making a necessity of something, which prevents you from considering rationally whether that thing is actually real.
It does sound like you have a very different understanding of what we mean by free will than I do. Free will to me is the fact you, me, and every human being has the complete freedom and ability to decide to do something irrespective of morality or consequence. We have that ability, we are not programmed.
I think our definitions are pretty close. To me, dualistic free will means that, given a choice, we could make that choice freely. And if we were somehow to go back to that decision point, we could make a different choice. Nowhere have I brought morality or consequence into my definition. I think we mean the same thing. I agree completely with your definition.

And there is no known way for free will to exist. At a physical level, our actions are as predetermined as if you rolled a rock down a hill. The only way for free will to exist is if it operates on a non-physical level. Which can’t be tested or proved, so shouldn’t be assumed.
 
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Sounds like a red herring argument. We are talking about human free will. If you’re asking why God allows bad things to happen then I’m sure there are plenty of topics here and elsewhere that can help answer that question. Nobody has ever guaranteed to Christians or anyone else that life on earth would be perfect and without suffering. But the afterlife will be if we trust God. 🙂
Yes, there are plenty of discussions. This is one of them 😉

The question I asked is: if God is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, then presumably he could stop bad things happening to good people - like we all presumably would. So why doesn’t he? The options are:
  1. He’s not all-powerful - he can’t stop these things happening, or
  2. He’s not all-knowing - he doesn’t know these things are about to happen to has no opportunity to prevent them, or
  3. He’s not all-good - he doesn’t actually care what happens to people, or
  4. He’s beyond our understanding and shouldn’t be questioned in this way.
Options 1 to 3 are clearly anathema to theists.
Option 4 is is a fallacious argument known as “special pleading.”

I’m yet to hear an Option 5 from anybody that doesn’t amount to another fallacious argument - begging the question. Although one person has argued, without seeming to realise the irony, that Option 4 is not special pleading because God is special 🤣.
 
Although one person has argued, without seeming to realise the irony, that Option 4 is not special pleading because God is special 🤣
:roll_eyes:

Simple question for you: is there any case in which the claim of an exception isn’t special pleading? After all, that’s your thesis here – that the claim of an exception for God is simply special pleading.
 
To answer your questions here’s two sufficient points:
  1. First of all God cannot be thought of analogous to an engineer of sorts but rather an artist. For if you ask an artist “Why would you paint on this perfectly good canvas? It’s clean and white and fine the way it is” the artist would question your thoughts about what purposes are.
    Second if the question is specifically “why be created to worship him?”
    Understand:
    If God is, metaphysically, Happiness itself, Love itself, Existence itself, and such, then it is plausible to say his creation that is loved would be made to be centered around Himself. For if he is Happiness itself and would want His creation to enter into eternal happiness and love, he would not create beings centered around something less than the infinite Happiness that is himself, for that would hinder his creation completely.
    Being egotistical is strictly a human trait, and under the assumption that there is God, we cannot describe Him to be egotistical.
  2. Personalities, yes perhaps. Actions, no. It is not a scientific fact that everyone’s actions and decisions are not strictly affected by their biology or environment. Scientifically this aspect is unknown (Read the book: Free, Why Science hasn’t disproved Free Will by Alfred R. Mele) however under the assumptions that God created us with Free Will, this is something we can trust that our own actions are our own responsibility.
On another point, even if the answers are insufficient to the questions, understand that we are limited beings with limited amounts of knowledge. If the assumption that God exists is true, then it follows that there is infinite Being itself whose understanding we might not be able to obtain in this life.

Therefore the test is not questions accidental such as these, but rather an actual test of whether or not God actually exists and if the events surrounding Christianity are true.
 
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FredBloggs:
Although one person has argued, without seeming to realise the irony, that Option 4 is not special pleading because God is special 🤣
:roll_eyes:

Simple question for you: is there any case in which the claim of an exception isn’t special pleading? After all, that’s your thesis here – that the claim of an exception for God is simply special pleading.
Of course there is - when the exception can be justified.

From logicallyfallacious.com:
“Applying standards, principles, and/or rules to other people or circumstances, while making oneself or certain circumstances exempt from the same critical criteria, without providing adequate justification.” (emphasis mine)
 
I wholeheartedly disagree with the above and thus disagree with your conclusion below.
Granted you disagree. Now can you explain why you don’t agree that free will is exercised out of a reaction to an unknown stimulus?
I will agree that everything is sustained in and by God and we are called to be more like Him. How are we to do this? Through His grace alone.
We then agree that scripture has indicated that God sustains all that exists, including the actualization of a sense of free will. Can we also agree that nothing exists apart from Gods will to allow it, by definition of what God is? Then how is it that our free will can exist outside of Gods since Gods will is existence? If our free will exists within the will of God then how is it that our will is free in that it is within the will of God that it is exercised and thus Gods will in its exercising? I think most people don’t realize what they are actually saying when they speak of us having “free” will.
I think there is a misconception of this being in the image of God thing. We can no more be like God than a painting is like the artist and even further than this the artist is nothing like what he is painting. God is not painting miniature versions of himself. We are not dealing with degrees of similarly possessed qualities but by definition of what God is we are dealing with completely different classes of qualities that are possessed by each entity. God is wholly unique in classification. The one element of which it is the sole member of a class of beings. There is no way to compare our qualities with Gods, even by degree, if God is to remain uniquely classified. Gods grace gives us the qualities which he wills us to possess and that’s as far as our qualities can go. The rest of this theological hogwash is a convoluted and contradictory human fairy tale of speculative wishful thinking. This is why God’s actions and perceived “inactions” can seem so contradictory at times. We are judging them by human standards.
 
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