Questions of Divine Command Theory

[Relinquish]

This is not unintuitive at all, but it can be if you (a) do not understand the argument or (b) force a misconception in the understanding. “God is good” is similar to “God is love” or “God is forgiveness;” those attributes, and others, are perfected in God.

This is very damning to your beliefs. The only reason why theists are able to get away with saying “goodness is God’s nature” for the most part is because there isn’t any one very clear conception of what goodness is, so they’re able to take this pretty vague concept and make it their own.

Unfortunately love, forgiveness, and such are not at all vague concepts. I can define both and I do not need to use God to do so. Furthermore when I define them both it becomes very apparent that they have nothing to do with each other, and are certainly not identical. Identity is a symmetric relationship such that if x is identical to y, then y is identical to x.

Your claim implies that since God is identical to love and God is identical to forgiveness, love is identical to forgiveness. This is just obviously not true.

As for your misunderstanding my last sentence: what is good is because God deemed it so. Thus, somethings “goodness” comes because God said so, it comes through Him.

Ah so you’re using a less sophisticated (no offense) version of divine command theory. Well to this I’ll raise the classical euthpyro dilemma; are God’s commands good because he says so, or does he command them because they are good?

 

[Patavium]

I never said it was possible for God to do evil. I recognize that you’ve defined goodness in such a way that any action God preforms is good. What I said is that it’s logically possible for God to do things that we all believe are evil such as rape and murder for no reason more than the fun of it—which would imply that these possibly are morally sufficient reasons to rape and murder.

Another point to make; if you can’t trust your intuitions that, say, homosexuals shouldn’t be killed just for being gay despite what God commands, then how can you trust any of your moral intuitions or even God for that matter as he gave you those intuitions? Now maybe your intuitions are perfectly in line with Christian doctrine. Mine are not and I think most people would say theirs are not either, and accepting divine command theory would throw me into such a deep global skeptism that I would have trouble accepting it even if there were persuasive arguments to support it. Just like how we’re all dubious of other areas of global skeptism, like the problem of other minds or the possibility of being a brain in a vat.

Again, your “god” is this emotional being that is pretty much a human that acts according to his hedonism. I would say your god is human, and not a god.

God doesn’t command homosexuals to be killed.

I like the fact that you claim believing in God will lead to your deep skepticism. How many times I have heard the same sentence, just to see those same people become believers…

It does not really matter what You think. This doesn’t change God. However, God may act in your life to help you see.

 

[Relinquish]

this probably isn’t helpful because it really does not address your question but Catholics do not ascribe to divine command theory. the ascribe to Natural Law theory.

and if you are worried about the problem of evil i would suggest reading plantinga. here is a link to an article that summarizes it very well but plantinga did such a good job refuting the problem of evil that nearly every atheist accepts what he says as true and they had to rephrase their problem of evil argument to make it around plantinga’s argument

www.hughlafollette.com/papers/Plantinga_on_the_Free_Will_Defense.pdf

Did you mean to post this to me? I’ve never heard of the natural law theory, but I’ll look into it thanks.

And yes I’ve read Plantinga’s book God, Freedom, and Evil, and I agree that his free will defense does dismantle the logical problem of evil. There is of course the evidential problem of evil, which it does not even touch and has been around just as long as the logical problem of evil.

 

[Relinquish]

Can you be a little more specific?

Okay.

There is a distinction between essence and existence in everything but God.

I have only ever heard one alright definition of essence, that being the qualities you possess in every possible world–and I don’t even think I accept that. For the most part the lay man conception of essence seems completely incoherent. I don’t know what theory of essence you’re using here, though, and I don’t know what it could possibly mean for there to be a distinction between essence and existence in everything but God.

Thus, while I can be said to be good, God alone can be said to be goodness, because His essence just is existence, and so whatever can be said to be true of Him, He actually, literally is.

Putting asterisk’s around words doesn’t make them any more meaningful, and neither does saying “it actually, it literally is” make things any more real. You seem to be trying to say either that God’s existence is more real than any other particular’s existence, or that God is existence itself. This is just nonsense at face value, though. Maybe you could clarify it.

This isn’t an arbitrary distinction but one necessitated by the simple fact that God alone is and must be actus purus.

You here seem to be trying to say that God is the only thing which exists. Well I exist. I am not God (or maybe I am?) so if that’s what you intended then thanks… I guess? It’s a nice complement, at least

 

[Gorgias]

Not at all! If the standard of goodness was not a moral agent then the goodness could not be itself good.

Soooo… God can’t be the source/standard of goodness, but there has to be a standard of goodness that is a moral agent? But then, given your previous statement, your moral agent’s meaningfulness/praiseworthiness comes from his ability to do evil. But, if your moral agent does evil, then his evil is perceived as goodness…? And so, by your logic, whether the standard is God or some other moral agent, there’s never the case in which it’s possible to discern moral behavior…!

Relinquish:

it’s perfectly logically possible for God to do things that we would consider evil.

Relinquish:

I never said it was possible for God to do evil.

If you say so…

Another point to make; if you can’t trust your intuitions that, say, homosexuals shouldn’t be killed just for being gay despite what God commands, then how can you trust any of your moral intuitions or even God for that matter as he gave you those intuitions?

God doesn’t command that homosexuals qua homosexuals should be killed. Nor, I would say, is there a moral imperative on us to kill those who perform homosexual acts. (Note that the laws God gives humanity, given that we change over time, are not necessarily meant to hold for all time. You’re making the invalid assumption that we’re held to all the laws asserted in Scripture – for example, the laws of the Mosaic covenant.) Therefore, at the time that God gave commands to the ancient Hebrews, those laws were appropriate in that time and that place for whatever reasons God had for giving the laws. The commandments we now have in place (love God, and love your neighbor), are appropriate for us.

You have accused me of equivocation. Please demonstrate where I have commuted this offense.

Certainly. By obfuscating the notion of God’s goodness, you attempt to demonstrate that God may do evil (although you seem not to want to admit you’ve done so). Once you make this move, you proceed to call evil acts “good”. In other words, by playing fast and loose with definitions, you’re providing two contrary interpretations to a single act. You’re equivocating on the moral quality of an action.

And I realize that you believe God is the standard of goodness, you nor has anyone proven it as of yet, though.

True enough; yet, since this wasn’t your question, nor did you demand us to prove it (IIRC), then why are you taking us to task on this? Or are you tired of your initial assertions, and want to move to this issue?

I never spoke of a contradiction.

Be that as it may, you certainly gave a compelling description of it!

It does not matter what I conceive of evil to be, I am asking you according to YOUR conception of good and evil, would the creator Moloch be good to rape and torture and burn babies alive for the fun of it?

But you know what my conception of good is: God. Therefore, a theoretical deity who commands evil acts would necessarily be evil.

This is how I’m trying to judge if YOUR conception of good and evil are meaningful.

Aaah… and there’s the rub: your notion of “meaningfulness”. You claim that meaningfulness of moral actions stems from the judgment of the actions of some moral agent who is held to be a standard. There’s a problem, though: who judges? When someone external to the external agent judges, then we’ve left the realm of objective morality – the ultimate arbiter of moral action is no longer the “standard”, but rather, the “judge”. This is why it makes more sense that the standard be the source of goodness himself, God.

What I believe the identity of evil to be is irrelevant, please do not try to shift the burden of proof again or we will not get anywhere.

I would argue that it’s highly relevant. If your conception of evil doesn’t match the nature of God, we’re done with this discussion – there’s no substance to be argued: God =/= evil.

 

[Gorgias]

You here seem to be trying to say that God is the only thing which exists. Well I exist.

No… you exist now. A hundred years ago, you couldn’t make that claim.

God is the only one who exists in an absolute way. For any creature C, there exists some time in which “God exists” and “C does not exist”. Therefore, the only true being of whom existence can be absolutely asserted is God.

 

[Relinquish]

Again, your “god” is this emotional being that is pretty much a human that acts according to his hedonism. I would say your god is human, and not a god.

That’s great, I’m not interested in arguing such a trivial thing as semantics.

God doesn’t command homosexuals to be killed.

Read your bible.

I like the fact that you claim believing in God will lead to your deep skepticism. How many times I have heard the same sentence, just to see those same people become believers…

I never said any such thing, you are blatantly misrepresenting me. I said accepting divine command theory would lead me to deep skeptism. Please try to get it right next time.

It does not really matter what You think. This doesn’t change God. However, God may act in your life to help you see.

No and I suppose proofs and evidence don’t matter to what you think, it doesn’t change your opinions because that’s all they are.

And if he existed that would be nice for him to do so.

 

[Gorgias]

I have only ever heard one alright definition of essence, that being the qualities you possess in every possible world–and I don’t even think I accept that. For the most part the lay man conception of essence seems completely incoherent. I don’t know what theory of essence you’re using here, though, and I don’t know what it could possibly mean for there to be a distinction between essence and existence in everything but God.

And yet, a “layman’s definition” isn’t the position from which you’re arguing, right?

From the Thomistic Philosophy Page:

Everything has two principles that explains its being, essence and existence. In all beings except for God, these principles are both required in order for the actually existing individual thing to be. Each is distinct from the other, yet this distinction is a real, not merely logical, one. The following explanation summarizes the main argument of On Being and Essence, Chapter 4, which can be found by following this link.

Essence may be described as the “what” of a thing. It is the quiddity of the thing, that which is known about it by our forming of a concept. It is a formal principle since for material reality, it is abstracted by the human intellect. Hence, it is a universal principle making many material individuals to be of the same kind (for angels, it makes each angel to be a species unto itself). But, it is obvious upon reflection that “what a thing is” and “that it is” are completely different statements.

That a thing is or has existence, is a principle really distinct from its quiddity. In no case (except for God) does the essence of a thing indicate anything about whether that thing really is. The essence of a horse that exists, and the essence of a horse that doesn’t are absolutely the same, namely horse-ness; a horse’s existing is totally different from what kind of a thing it is. Therefore, there must be something about really existing things that accounts for this very existing, and it is not their essence; it is their existence. Existence then is that which makes essences to be, to exercise the act of existing. St. Thomas indicated the activity of being, existence, with the Latin of “to be”, esse.

By saying that existence is the act of being (esse) exercised by beings, Thomas understands it to be similar to form, in that it actualizes a potency as form actualizes matter. Taking the notions of an act/potency relationship learned from cosmology as form and matter, he expands the notion of form by means of analogy. Just as the substantial form of a material being determines and makes actual some part of matter, so esse actualizes the potency of a thing’s essence. This similarity is an analogous one because, the esse and essence of a thing are not separable in real beings, as the form is separable from matter in abstraction; the two are only distinguishable because of their own very real distinction. Esse is logically prior to all other actuality because a thing cannot be in a certain way unless it simply is. So, because of this logical priority of existence, Thomas calls it “the most formal of all.” “It is the actuality of all acts” since a thing is in virtue of esse and “acts are of supposits.”

 

[Patavium]

That’s great, I’m not interested in arguing such a trivial thing as semantics.

Good. Your argument falls apart.

Read your bible.

I have read it, but I recommend for you to read the New Testament where Jesus revisits the commandments.

I never said any such thing, you are blatantly misrepresenting me. I said accepting divine command theory would lead me to deep skeptism. Please try to get it right next time.

Fair enough.

No and I suppose proofs and evidence don’t matter to what you think, it doesn’t change your opinions because that’s all they are.

Proofs and evidence does matter to me. I am a scientist by profession. However, God has acted in ways in my life that undeniably show me He does exist.

And if he existed that would be nice for him to do so.

Yes indeed.

 

[sw85]

How so?

If goodness is a particular aspect of God, and not the totality of his nature, that means that there exists a quality (being good or goodness) that is not identical to God’s nature but which God’s nature possesses. This means that goodness or the good is external to God’s nature. I’m sorry but you’ve got to be careful with your metaphysics

What I mean is that goodness is one manner of understanding God’s nature. Likewise, we sometimes break “the good” down into three subvirtues: beauty, virtue, and truth. They’re all “the good,” just distinct manners of understanding it as it applies, respectively, to the material, vital, and rational dimensions of being.

There is no sense in talking about the “totality” of God’s nature, which is purely simple (i.e., not joined of two or more parts).

You’re making some very bad metaphysical claims that I just cant get on board with.

If this is the first time you’ve heard them, that’s not surprising. I’m no apologist. But you owe it to history to do some homework here before complaining that no one will get on board with your historically nonnormative position. Feser’s works would be useful here.

I have only ever heard one alright definition of essence, that being the qualities you possess in every possible world–and I don’t even think I accept that. For the most part the lay man conception of essence seems completely incoherent. I don’t know what theory of essence you’re using here, though, and I don’t know what it could possibly mean for there to be a distinction between essence and existence in everything but God.

This is not the proper definition of essence. Feser specifically attacks this idea of essentialism, which comes to us from Kripke and Putnam. Properly speaking, the essence is simply that which makes a thing what it is, and which allows it to be apprehended as such. To speak of “humanity,” then, is to speak of the quality which makes a thing a human – that is, to grasp the essential characteristic(s) of the human being.

Putting asterisk’s around words doesn’t make them any more meaningful, and neither does saying “it actually, it literally is” make things any more real. You seem to be trying to say either that God’s existence is more real than any other particular’s existence, or that God is existence itself. This is just nonsense at face value, though. Maybe you could clarify it.

Yes, I am saying God is being itself, i.e., actus purus. (By extension, yes, this means God is the “most real” thing in existence). Are you really not familiar with this idea? It’s pretty essential to the theistic tradition you’re rejecting. It may sound strange at first sight but the existence of such a being is logically necessary. Here again, I recommend Feser’s Aquinas. It’s from this we get the idea of a God who is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, i.e., unqualified and unlimited being with respect to the material, vital, and rational levels of being.

I use asterisks to emphasize words, rather than type out the bold/italics markers. I’m lazy I guess.

You here seem to be trying to say that God is the only thing which exists. Well I exist. I am not God (or maybe I am?) so if that’s what you intended then thanks… I guess? It’s a nice complement, at least

No. I’m saying that God is the only thing which exists necessarily.

I never said any such thing, you are blatantly misrepresenting me. I said accepting divine command theory would lead me to deep skeptism. Please try to get it right next time.

OK, so don’t accept it.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

This is very damning to your beliefs. The only reason why theists are able to get away with saying “goodness is God’s nature” for the most part is because there isn’t any one very clear conception of what goodness is, so they’re able to take this pretty vague concept and make it their own.

There is no ‘good’ definition of goodness, it, strictly speaking, cannot be defined. For centuries, philosophers have been trying to do so and all have failed.

Unfortunately love, forgiveness, and such are not at all vague concepts. I can define both and I do not need to use God to do so. Furthermore when I define them both it becomes very apparent that they have nothing to do with each other, and are certainly not identical. Identity is a symmetric relationship such that if x is identical to y, then y is identical to x.

Your claim implies that since God is identical to love and God is identical to forgiveness, love is identical to forgiveness. This is just obviously not true.

First off: My claim does not imply that; my claim implies that love & forgiveness is perfected in God, not that the two are identical. Secondly, does it not take love to forgive? Does it not take forgiveness to love? Oftentimes, you do need one to do the other (more on the first part of loving to forgive). Thirdly, most anyone can look at a dictionary and find definitions of love & forgiveness that do not call God into the definition. Case in point, Concise Oxford Dictionary definitions of love & forgiveness:
love
(1) strong feeling or affection (noun)
(2) a great interest or pleasure in something (noun)
(3) feel deep affection or sexual love for (verb)
forgiveness
(1) the action or process of forgiving (noun)
forgive
(1) stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offense, flaw, or mistake (verb)

Ah so you’re using a less sophisticated (no offense) version of divine command theory. Well to this I’ll raise the classical euthpyro dilemma; are God’s commands good because he says so, or does he command them because they are good?

If I pick the first choice, then it would appear there is an external standard to God. If I pick the second choice, you can ask ‘why does God command them?’ It appears to be quite the conundrum, until you realize that it’s a loaded question and any first-year philosopher can figure it out:
God’s commands are good because he says so, but he is not drawing from an external standard for defining goodness. Rather, God’s nature is the moral standard.

 

[Relinquish]

Not at all! If the standard of goodness was not a moral agent then the goodness could not be itself good.

No! You must have misread me. I said it doesn’t make sense for any moral agent to be the standard of goodness. This is why I believe the standard of goodness is not a moral agent, because then you run into the paradox of the Euthyphro dilemma. You only run into the Euthyphro dilemma when you try to say that the standard of goodness is itself a moral agent, and that is why I reject divine command theory.

If you say so…

Look I said that it’s logically possible for God to do things that we would consider evil, not that it’s logically possible for God to do evil. Of course if God raped people for the fun of it, on your conception of good, rape would be good. But you still have to deal with the fact that you don’t actually believe rape for the fun of it is good or that it’s even possible for it to be good. You believe, I presume, it’s evil and it will always be evil in any possible scenario.

God doesn’t command that homosexuals qua homosexuals should be killed. Nor, I would say, is there a moral imperative on us to kill those who perform homosexual acts. (Note that the laws God gives humanity, given that we change over time, are not necessarily meant to hold for all time. You’re making the invalid assumption that we’re held to all the laws asserted in Scripture – for example, the laws of the Mosaic covenant.) Therefore, at the time that God gave commands to the ancient Hebrews, those laws were appropriate in that time and that place for whatever reasons God had for giving the laws. The commandments we now have in place (love God, and love your neighbor), are appropriate for us.

I do not have to make any such assumption. I could easily say that it was wrong to kill a homosexual solely for having gay sex at the time God commanded it to be done. It was not appropriate ever to kill someone for having gay sex, not at that time and not at this time. If you believe there was any point in history where it was alright to kill someone for having gay sex, then quite frankly I would consider you delusional with respect to moral truths.

Certainly. By obfuscating the notion of God’s goodness, you attempt to demonstrate that God may do evil (although you seem not to want to admit you’ve done so). Once you make this move, you proceed to call evil acts “good”. In other words, by playing fast and loose with definitions, you’re providing two contrary interpretations to a single act. You’re equivocating on the moral quality of an action.

I never said any such thing. I said it was logically possible for God to preform actions which we all agree are evil. You may quote me to demonstrate where I might have said otherwise. Furthermore I never said that evil acts are good. I said that what is evil, on your view, could possibly be good if only God started doing it. I have not equivocated anything, again please quote me on this if you really feel I’m guilty of a fallacy.

True enough; yet, since this wasn’t your question, nor did you demand us to prove it (IIRC), then why are you taking us to task on this? Or are you tired of your initial assertions, and want to move to this issue?

You’re right on both regards. I started this thread trying to get to the matter if DCT was a philosophically tenable position. And though I don’t think that’s been demonstrated yet, I am starting to want to see why people believe it. I’m sorry I was pushing for more than the the original topic of the thread, I didn’t realize that the comment was ill placed until you pointed it out.

But you know what my conception of good is: God. Therefore, a theoretical deity who commands evil acts would necessarily be evil.

Ah well this is interesting. So there is nothing about being a creator, or being a designer, or having any other godlike qualities that makes God’s nature the standard of goodness. If he did not exist, but other gods did, there still would not be any standard of goodness. I didn’t realize you were trying to say this before. Now your conception of God has gotten a whole lot heavier as it’s taken on a new and very weighty quality. I have absolutely no idea how you could support the existence of such an entity. If this is what you conceive God to be, why do you even believe God exists?

Aaah… and there’s the rub: your notion of “meaningfulness”. You claim that meaningfulness of moral actions stems from the judgment of the actions of some moral agent who is held to be a standard. There’s a problem, though: who judges? When someone external to the external agent judges, then we’ve left the realm of objective morality – the ultimate arbiter of moral action is no longer the “standard”, but rather, the “judge”. This is why it makes more sense that the standard be the source of goodness himself, God.

Well no, I don’t think actions are meaningful in the sense I was getting at. Concepts are meaningful, or in other words coherent. That is what I was talking about.

And no I do not believe the “meaningfulness” of an action (what ever that means) stems from the judgements of the actions. And I do not believe that God is the standard or source of goodness.

 

[Relinquish]

There is a quote option in this forum for a reason, please learn to use it.

Good. Your argument falls apart.

You haven’t yet addressed the argument, so I can only assume that you agree with the conclusion.

I have read it, but I recommend for you to read the New Testament where Jesus revisits the commandments.

But you are committed to the belief that there was a time in human history where it was good to kill homosexuals. It was never alright to kill people merely for being homosexual, and it never will be. I reject that morality is relative to time in human history, anyway. What is evil have always been evil and will always be evil–your relativist moral standard is just wrong.

Proofs and evidence does matter to me. I am a scientist by profession. However, God has acted in ways in my life that undeniably show me He does exist.

Fair enough.

 

[Relinquish]

There is no ‘good’ definition of goodness, it, strictly speaking, cannot be defined. For centuries, philosophers have been trying to do so and all have failed.

Yes. I am content defining goodness by just listing off the things we consider good, but most are not.

First off: My claim does not imply that; my claim implies that love & forgiveness is perfected in God, not that the two are identical. Secondly, does it not take love to forgive? Does it not take forgiveness to love? Oftentimes, you do need one to do the other (more on the first part of loving to forgive). Thirdly, most anyone can look at a dictionary and find definitions of love & forgiveness that do not call God into the definition. Case in point, Concise Oxford Dictionary definitions of love & forgiveness:

What does it mean for them to be perfected in God? In most cases yes, but I’m not sure how that helps your case.

If I pick the first choice, then it would appear there is an external standard to God. If I pick the second choice, you can ask ‘why does God command them?’ It appears to be quite the conundrum, until you realize that it’s a loaded question and any first-year philosopher can figure it out:
God’s commands are good because he says so, but he is not drawing from an external standard for defining goodness. Rather, God’s nature is the moral standard.

So now you’re taking on the modern version of divine command theory; that it’s not good because God says so, but because it reflects God’s nature. Again I’ll ask; is God’s nature good because he does good things, or does God do good things because we’ve defined good as any action God preforms?

 

[Relinquish]

Maybe people get God’s commands wrong- and His commands are always filtered through social conditions. Divine command theory is very unpopular among Christians. William of Ockham is the only prominent example I can think of. Few Christians follow the Old Testament commands literally.

It seems pretty popular among the people visiting this thread, and among modern apologists

Do you suppose then that some of the OT laws were wrong, and that God never intended them to be given to his people?

Let me put it this way- Christians define God in terms of goodness, and nothing else. “Power” and “omniscience” are just secondary, metaphoric attributes, used in some particular literary discourses, but not essential. That is why Jesus, who was perfectly good, is God.

Okay

 

[Relinquish]

No… you exist now. A hundred years ago, you couldn’t make that claim.

Erm so?

God is the only one who exists in an absolute way. For any creature C, there exists some time in which “God exists” and “C does not exist”. Therefore, the only true being of whom existence can be absolutely asserted is God.

Would you please define “absolute,” and show why this means that God’s nature is the standard of goodness (if that’s what you meant)?

Also only propositions are truth-apt.

 

[Relinquish]

And yet, a “layman’s definition” isn’t the position from which you’re arguing, right?

Well no… I don’t use the notion of essence in my philosophies.

From the Thomistic Philosophy Page:

After reading that quote I don’t find myself knowing much better what you mean by essence. Could you give the necessary and sufficient conditions for something being an essence?

 

[Relinquish]

What I mean is that goodness is one manner of understanding God’s nature. Likewise, we sometimes break “the good” down into three subvirtues: beauty, virtue, and truth. They’re all “the good,” just distinct manners of understanding it as it applies, respectively, to the material, vital, and rational dimensions of being.

There is no sense in talking about the “totality” of God’s nature, which is purely simple (i.e., not joined of two or more parts).

And yet you speak of him possessing many qualities.

If this is the first time you’ve heard them, that’s not surprising. I’m no apologist. But you owe it to history to do some homework here before complaining that no one will get on board with your historically nonnormative position. Feser’s works would be useful here.

No offence but I’m a lazy fellow and I don’t have any motivation to read philosophers who do not sound like they’ve got anything going for them.

This is not the proper definition of essence. Feser specifically attacks this idea of essentialism, which comes to us from Kripke and Putnam. Properly speaking, the essence is simply that which makes a thing what it is, and which allows it to be apprehended as such. To speak of “humanity,” then, is to speak of the quality which makes a thing a human – that is, to grasp the essential characteristic(s) of the human being.

That is so incredibly vague, I don’t have any desire to deal with vacuous philosophies. Can you give necessary and sufficient conditions for something being an essence?

Yes, I am saying God is being itself, i.e., actus purus. (By extension, yes, this means God is the “most real” thing in existence). Are you really not familiar with this idea? It’s pretty essential to the theistic tradition you’re rejecting. It may sound strange at first sight but the existence of such a being is logically necessary. Here again, I recommend Feser’s Aquinas. It’s from this we get the idea of a God who is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, i.e., unqualified and unlimited being with respect to the material, vital, and rational levels of being.

Yes I reject that there is a “most real” thing. That makes absolutely no sense what so ever. And I don’t particularly care about theistic traditions–theistic traditions are often wrong. I’m interested in good solid philosophy. And please explain what it means for an entity to be more real than any other existent thing, or what it means for something to be existence itself, and how such an entity is logically necessary.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Yes. I am content defining goodness by just listing off the things we consider good, but most are not.

I would like to point out that you condemned the vagueness of the definition of goodness in the previous post I was quoting, but you take the same exact position here. Are you trying to emulate your maltheistic deity by changing your mind frequently as well?

What does it mean for them to be perfected in God? In most cases yes, but I’m not sure how that helps your case.

Not sure how you can be confused on the issue of something being perfected in God. Since God is a perfect being, then all traits that God possesses (i.e., goodness, love, forgiveness) are perfect by nature. Thus, goodness, love, & forgiveness (among many other traits) are perfected in God.

You said that love & forgiveness have nothing to do with each other. I offered evidence that they do have something to do with each other. So your acceptance of my point refutes one of your many points.

So now you’re taking on the modern version of divine command theory; that it’s not good because God says so, but because it reflects God’s nature. Again I’ll ask; is God’s nature good because he does good things, or does God do good things because we’ve defined good as any action God preforms?

I choose neither answer, because neither is correct. God’s nature is His attributes (qualities), not his actions. God is good because that is what He is, not what He does.

 

[carlysrose]

I’d like to see the proof.

Hehehe, Good luck with that!!