Philosophy of God

[Everstruggling]

Hey johnnycatholic

Thanks for the clarifying post. I finally understand where things went wrong.

I am trying to argue that God/cause is logical because creation is logically intelligable, creation would only be this way if its cause were logical and intelligable and posessed also the capacity for creation. The attributes of logic and intelligence are not rules that bind the cause/God they free it to be able to intelligently create.
Therefore the God/cause is by necessity Logical and intelligent. (basically the teleological argument)

I agree. Logically, the cause must be capable of producing the effect.

You are talking about a universe (for lack of a better word) that is free of the rules and responsibilities of ours

What I said *was *rather confusing. I meant the physical and temporal laws that govern our universe. Not the logical constraints on what a universe could be like. In otherwords, there could be universes that do not share the same physical attributes as this one. This universe might not expand and contract endlessly, but that doesn’t mean that no universe could. Lamarckian evolution didn’t occur on Earth, but in another universe it might occur. Nothing logically prevents it. Logic itself would still apply.

I’m sorry for my part in the whole confusion.

I still don’t agree with your arguments about God and morality, but at least I understand where you are coming from, and I can respect the logic that brought you there.

 

[Everstruggling]

Hi Everyone,

I hate to start a debate and run, but I’ve been spending so much time and energy on this in the past few days my fiancée has threatened to leave me if I don’t stop.

Since she is far more important to me than this debate, I think I’m going to have to beg off and spend some time with her instead.

Thanks to everyone who posted.

Everstruggling

 

[RyanL]

That can be easily explained. They are not syllogisms. None of them were supposed to be. I was just informally writing out my argument to make it easier to understand.

My mistake. I apologize. I simpy assumed that you were trying to conduct syllogisms based on your use of multiple premises and a conclusion which follows.

What it appears you were actually doing was either (1) trying to prove an unprovable self-evident truth (i.e., the law of contradiction (or non-contradiction) and the principle of the excluded middle), or (2) demonstrating in long form what constitutes a self-evident truth.

Seems like a lengthy way of saying what the definition of “is” is. (Ref: Bill Clinton.)

Frankly, that doesn’t strike me as an argument, properly speaking. I always thought that an argument was a coherent series of statements leading from a premise to a conclusion. You seem to be using the word to identify a self-evident truth (i.e., the principle of identity). Odd. It’s good, though. If you believe this form of epistemology, you’re half-way to a rational belief in God. I question your commitment to this principle, however, as noted in my next statement…

My argument is based on the fact that you are using the word “objectively” incorrectly. It isn’t that what we are discussing is difficult to judge, it is that there is no right answer. …It is subjective, it depends on what qualities of beautiful you value more. There is no right answer.

Everything is subjective? Nothing is “more/less beautiful” than anything else, objectively speaking? No one is “more/less likable”, objectively speaking (i.e., a perpetually violent rapist is just as likable as anyone else)? Is anything “more/less just”? Is anyone “more/less virtuous”?

And here I thought you believed in objective truth…things like the principle of identity and the law of non-contradiction, for example. I hadn’t taken you for a Subjectivist. Is that what you self-proclaim?

Which is longer? It depends on which is longer. Whether we know it is longer is immaterial.

Agreed.

Let us say you are right though. That all qualities are objectively definable. Your argument would follow that there is an ideal lenght that all other lengths are mearly degrees of. God decreed the ideal length and all other lengths fall short of this. The argument is patently absurd.

1. You haven’t shown it to be logically absurd. You have simply pronounced it, and without reason I might add.
2. I disagree that what you stated logically follows.

The Church is based on revelation, or at least that is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church suggests.

True, in part. Keep reading your Catechism. Then read the papal encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason). If you can make it through that, I would think you’ll be at a better starting point for this discussion.

Are you suggesting that a person could be led into moral error by following the teachings of the Church in a faithful, if non-understanding manner? I doubt you are.

It is possible that someone could be led into moral error by doing what they, in good faith, think the Catechism says, yes.

You might not follow blindly, but if a person followed the majesterium to the best of their ability, with no deeper understanding of why they are doing it, are they not acting morally?

Perhaps they are, perhaps they are not. If you want to discuss Catholic moral theology, we can certainly do so - but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. If you disagree we can explore it further.

God Bless,
RyanL

 

[RyanL]

Hi Everyone,

I hate to start a debate and run, but I’ve been spending so much time and energy on this in the past few days my fiancée has threatened to leave me if I don’t stop.

Since she is far more important to me than this debate, I think I’m going to have to beg off and spend some time with her instead.

Thanks to everyone who posted.

Everstruggling

D’oh! I started replying before I read this. Please keep reasoning. There are answers.

Good luck, and God Bless!!
RyanL

 

[Catholic_Dude]

A lot of people seem confused by that. Which in turn baffles me. It’s really quite easy to understand. A plant produces a seed, the wind blows the seed through the air until it reaches good soil. The seed forms a new plant. Do the air, seed, plant or soil plan it? No.

But your not addressing the fact the plant had to already exist. When you say there is a Cause, that Cause must stand alone and uncaused.
“As for do they plan it?..NO” Thats a false conclusion. The air isnt alive, so you cant say it “plans it” and as for the seed plant and soil, they certainly do plan it in a sense. They grow and react according to their nature and environment.

You can think God plans it if you want, but you certainly don’t have to. Even if you think God plans out exactly how plant life will reproduce, does he plan on every single plant? I find the notion that a creator would plan every single, solitary event in the universe laughable. If anything can be chance, then everything can be. If there is any randomness at all, then creation itself could be random.

Just because its “laughable” doesnt mean its not true or possible. As for “randomness” Im not sure what you are saying, but there is no such thing as “random”…when we say something is “random” we mean the means of calculating the outcome are far beyond our understanding.

Have you heard about the programme that beat Kasparov at chess. The people who created it couldn’t beat Kasparov at chess, but the computer could. So yes, God can most certainly create a rock so heavy he can’t lift it.

This is an interesting response and Im not sure how to respond.
I hope some Catholics around here can help me out on this.

Not greater, different or outside. Prove it’s greater.

Its greater because its not subject to anything. Time is a constraint and those within it are subject to it. As for “outside time” you admit that by the fact you said “something” existed before time existed.

**It can be programmed to start and continue expanding. **The universe isn’t infinite though, remember we discussed that?
It has to be finite or else the whole theory of God false apart.

I feel like we are going in circles here. WHO is the “Programmer” here? You admit there is a something that can be programmed, now you have to realize a “programmer” must exist. That “programmer” must be conscious.

Er… I do argue that. Frequently. All the time. Whatever caused the universe to be almost by definition was not alive in anyway that we would understand the term.

Nobody argues that whatever caused the universe was alive in the same sense we are as humans.
That being said I cant understand how a living thing can result from a lifeless thing anymore than a dead battery can fully charge another dead battery.

 

[RyanL]

ES:

Have you heard about the programme that beat Kasparov at chess. The people who created it couldn’t beat Kasparov at chess, but the computer could. So yes, God can most certainly create a rock so heavy he can’t lift it.

This is an interesting response and Im not sure how to respond.
I hope some Catholics around here can help me out on this.

Sure thing.

OF COURSE the programmers could have beaten Kasparov at chess - what they lacked was time and method. What Deep Blue did was run a vast number of games “in its head” over millions of iterations. Given the time, the programmers could have worked this out long-hand, going several moves deep, and then compiling their results, determining probabilities, and then making a move. After this move, they would have to do it all over again. That’s all Deep Blue did.

The advantage of Deep Blue is that it worked at the speed of the processor (several processors, actually), which is much faster than our brains. There wasn’t anything new about the way it played (which is to say that the rules didn’t change), the only thing that changed was that Deep Blue could go faster and deeper in thinking about the game than previous iterations could.

It’s just like calculating Pi. We could do it out to several hundred thousand decimal places in long hand, but the computer does it much faster. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just very time consuming (and we mortals are a bit short on that).

As for a rock so big He can’t lift it, it’s a contradiction in terms. Nonsense doesn’t suddenly become sense simply because you put the words “God can” in front of it. It’s like asking if God can make a round square or if God can dflkjaasdflkj. It doesn’t make sense. Even God cannot do nonsense. God is omnipotent, and therefore all things are within His power. Asking if God can make something beyond the power of an omnipotent being is just plain silly. Again, it’s like asking if God can make a perfectly spherical cube or a “coffee cup which is both all red and not all red”, to use a previous example.

God Bless,
RyanL

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Sure thing.

OF COURSE the programmers could have beaten Kasparov at chess - what they lacked was time and method. What Deep Blue did was run a vast number of games “in its head” over millions of iterations. Given the time, the programmers could have worked this out long-hand, going several moves deep, and then compiling their results, determining probabilities, and then making a move. After this move, they would have to do it all over again. That’s all Deep Blue did.

The advantage of Deep Blue is that it worked at the speed of the processor (several processors, actually), which is much faster than our brains. There wasn’t anything new about the way it played (which is to say that the rules didn’t change), the only thing that changed was that Deep Blue could go faster and deeper in thinking about the game than previous iterations could.

It’s just like calculating Pi. We could do it out to several hundred thousand decimal places in long hand, but the computer does it much faster. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just very time consuming (and we mortals are a bit short on that).

As for a rock so big He can’t lift it, it’s a contradiction in terms. Nonsense doesn’t suddenly become sense simply because you put the words “God can” in front of it. It’s like asking if God can make a round square or if God can dflkjaasdflkj. It doesn’t make sense. Even God cannot do nonsense. God is omnipotent, and therefore all things are within His power. Asking if God can make something beyond the power of an omnipotent being is just plain silly. Again, it’s like asking if God can make a perfectly spherical cube or a “coffee cup which is both all red and not all red”, to use a previous example.

God Bless,
RyanL

Thanks for the help

 

[Michael_Francis]

Thanks to all who contributed to the discussion.
This thread is now closed.