Hitetlen:
I have some objections (big surprise, eh?). One is that we all live in the universe and have to employ its properties if for nothing else, for the purposes of this conversation.
A more serious one is this: logic is not a special feature which can be applied or discarded at will. To exist is to exist as something as compared to existing as something else. You yourself adhere to this principle when you make an actual utterance about God, when you declare that “God is a loving being” (even if the word “loving” is not clearly defined). If this concept does not apply in the realm where God dwells, you cannot make any utterance about God, the whole concept becomes sheer nonsense. I don’t think you want to do that.
I guess I didn’t make it so clear what I was trying to say.
Us, as entities of this universe, are trying to apply logic, a feature of this universe, to something outside this universe. Now, honestly, it is done in a sort of (excuse the phrase) half-assed manner. Like I said you cannot know the mind of God, these features are ambiguous, etc. The reason that I use such terminology is that is the terminology that Christ used, Christ being like a ‘universal mapping’ of a beyond this universe being. Without delving further into this topic, I cannot really describe it much better.
And again, I am not saying that God ‘simply exists as something’; to say that would imply that you are putting limits on God, which I can’t do. To say that God must adhere to logic is putting limits on Him, which I cannot do. Even to say that God is a “loving God” is putting limits on Him. What’s the difference? Well, I think its because people just want to have some way to convey what God is to other people. Whenever I try and describe God to people, it always just comes out as a jumbled mess.
I think the real problem here is that communication breaks down. Like Aquinas said when he stopped writing his proofs, he just couldn’t use clumsy human language to describe God anymore.
I think it interesting that the people of Hindu faith (who might have a more proper starting point) say that ‘God is a being to which no properties can be ascribed.’ Would that be more adequate to you?
Hitetlen:
As I said in the previous paragraph, even to have a starting point (as you put it) the words have to have some meaning, and there are some rules to apply them - and that presupposes to application of the law of identity. Let me remind you of a funny picture: a pure solipsist who tries to convince you that you don’t exist and you are merely a figment of his imagination. Why does he bother? Such a person would belong to an insane asylum, wouldn’t he?
No, Descartes was not in an insane asylum (or maybe he was, but he likely wouldn’t be today). Philosophical skepticism is a fairly reasonable, albeit hard to live with, position. I was a skepticist for a while, but I didn’t really do much of anything besides sit in my basement. Still, that doesn’t make it an invalid position.
Hitetlen:
I know that some previously necessary pains can be alleviated today: the easiest examples come from the medical progress we are all witnessing. Some previously painful procedures are replaced by non-painful ones. With the discovery of new pain-killers we can alleviate previously existing pains. You cannot argue (convincingly) that all the pains we are able to allieviate today somehow lost their significance they had yesterday. That yesterday all these pains had some vaild reasons to exist, but today that all changed and their existence is not necessary any more.
Actually I recall that the first time the childbirth pains were dampened, some of the Catholic clergy were in uproar, saying that God ordained that women MUST deliver their children “in sorrow”, and that alleviating the pains of child birth were a slap into God’s face. Pretty funny, if you stop to think about it.
To sum it up: if you want to argue that all existing pains are necessary, you should be able to bring up valid reasons why that idea ought to be entertained. To say that if those pains would not be necessary, God would not allow then to exist (since God is allegedly “good”) that has no meaning to anyone who does not accept your position - especially since we all see that previously existing pains are disappearing.
Again, the same problem comes about. You should have read the response to Rowe’s Argument from Evil that I mentioned before, which does point out a logically valid reason that these sufferings exist.
At any rate, we just seem to be going in circles and we have veered WAY off topic so I am going to bow out of this. Good conversations though.
