Because otherwise logic would exist independently from God, and that would mean he did not create it.
Exactly the opposite. To argue God created logic is to argue that God exists outside of or independently from logic.
To argue this would be to argue that God, by virtue of being separate from logic, is not logical. To argue God is not logical would be to render any statement about God inherently meaningless. It would mean the statement "God is God" and the statement "God is not God" would be equally valid, as would any statement about God ever. We would not be able to create meaningful assertions about God, because there would be no logic to God.
Since there is a logic to God, we can state that God is logical. Since it does not follow that God created logic, we can presume that God's being logical is a quality inherent to God that God has always had.
To argue this would be to argue that God, by virtue of being separate from logic, is not logical. To argue God is not logical would be to render any statement about God inherently meaningless. It would mean the statement "God is God" and the statement "God is not God" would be equally valid, as would any statement about God ever. We would not be able to create meaningful assertions about God, because there would be no logic to God.
Or perhaps he exists outside of our understanding of logic, in much the same way he supposedly exists outside of our perception of time and just about everything else.
Since there is a logic to God, we can state that God is logical. Since it does not follow that God created logic, we can presume that God's being logical is a quality inherent to God that God has always had.
We are dealing with a being that claims to have existed always.
As such, I see anything as possible.
Not if it contradicts logic.
Again, literally all statements about God become equally valid and invalid if we presume logic does not apply to God, including "God is God," "God is not God," "God created logic," "God did not create logic," and "oiehgoighoirhrinfiubuhgirhgrhlhirih."
Or perhaps he exists outside of our understanding of logic,
Undoubtedly, but that is not the same thing as saying he exists outside logic. There is no "exists outside of logic." To say something exists is to make a statement about it, which one cannot do without logic.
So, lacking P, the entire chain of P->C must be true because it cannot be considered false or otherwise considered in any way whatsoever?
See, I get the basics of conditional logic, and as such I know that if you have P->C and only P->C, then you cannot get anything out of a situation where you have -P, seeing as how you have nothing to even deal with the given chain to begin with.
So I found the whole concept here confusing. I find it a little silly.
Hammers look a bit silly too, if you think about it -- that is, until you've also seen a nail. For all it underpins our language, humans are pretty bad at basic logic when it comes down to it, because there isn't a straightforward intuition pump that will get you there. Logic is at the bottom of everything, making it difficult to get "underneath" it.
In a two-valued logic, where all statements come out either true or false, there are only sixteen (2^4) possible truth-functional relations between any pair of statements. You can find them all listed out on Wikipedia's article on truth tables if you like. Of those sixteen, only one of them captures the idea that "Q is true whenever P is true" -- and that's the one we call material implication.
It can easily be seen, by looking at these truth tables, that if you want to capture that idea you can't use any of the other ones. For instance, you may be thinking: why should we make conditionals with false antecedents true? Why not make them all false? Well, if you try that, you get the truth table for the AND operation -- and that's not what you want, because if you use the truth table for AND as the truth table for ->, then you could conclude using only the pure conditional "it is raining->I will bring my umbrella" the unconditional "it is raining." Clearly this is absurd and not what is meant by conditional reasoning.
As an exercise for your edification, repeat this for the 15 other possible truth tables. (Hint to speed your work along: you don't need to think about all 15 if you take advantage of symmetries.) You will find that all but one of them fail in some way to capture the meaning of the conditional -- and the one that captures it is the one that assigns "true" to all possible inputs except when P is true and Q is false.
There really isn't any deeper truth to it than that. Logic, like a hammer, is a tool; hammers are meant to pound in nails; logic is meant to capture modes of reasoning, thought, and language. The material conditional is the best possible effort in two-valued logic to capture the relation of consequence.
It can easily be seen, by looking at these truth tables, that if you want to capture that idea you can't use any of the other ones. For instance, you may be thinking: why should we make conditionals with false antecedents true? Why not make them all false?
Why can't it be "unknown"?
Because it is utterly and completely irrelevant whether P is false for that particular conditional logic (P->Q)? And as long as Q remains Q, P->Q remains true?
Because classical logic is two-valued; it insists that everything be either true or false. Even if you personally don't know whether it's true or false, classical logic holds it to be the case that it is exactly one of those two, whether or not you are aware of it. This is known as the "law of excluded middle" and I caution you -- as tempting as it may be, do not toss it aside lightly.
Furthermore, in the present situation even this much is not the case, because we are not ignorant: since we know P is false, we know all that can be known about P->Q.
That's not necessarily the end of the story, though, because you can, if you wish, toss aside the law of excluded middle and attempt to analyze the situation in a nonclassical logic -- for instance, Lukasiewicz three-valued logic, which adds a third truth value that is intended to capture the semantic idea of "ignorance" or "unknown." The implication model of classical logic embeds in Lukasiewicz logic, though, so if you are certain of P's falsity, then you won't be ignorant about P->Q either. Off the top of my head I am not aware of a nonclassical propositional logic that deviates significantly from this implication model, but I think there probably is one.
You really must read the book I recommended to you in that PM! (Or consider making a new thread about basic logic in the Philosophy board.)
You answer it since you're the one who believes that God is omni-benevolent, and you are a Christian.
I honestly do not have an answer.
That's because there is no answer that could reconcile the problems with the statement "Things are right because God commands them." As demonstrated, such a position would render all moral statements meaningless, and would be incapable of answering why we should follow God's commands in the first place, since they would be totally arbitrary.
I will reconcile your original question by showing the following two statements can be simultaneously true:
#1: "X would be moral today and Y would be moral tomorrow if and only if God changed his moral law from X today to Y tomorrow." Lets call this statement q<-->r.
#2: "God's moral law would change from X today to Y tomorrow if and only if God's nature and attributes changed from A today to B tomorrow." Lets call this statement p<-->q.
So the corresponding row of the truth table that reconciles these statements looks like:
p, q, r, p<-->q, q<-->r
F, F, F, T, T
That is how I reconcile it.
... Exactly how many times am I going to ask you to reconcile something, only to have you respond completely ignoring the particular statement that is the source of contention and the reason I asked you to reconcile your arguments in the first place? It's really irritating.
I was clearly asking you to reconcile the above with your statement that God's will never changes, that God is immutable. First you said that God's will could change, then you talked at length about the immutability of God. Well which is it? Can God change or is God immutable?
Would you care to address that instead of "conveniently" ignoring it?
It was moral of God to command Abraham to kill Isaac.
I did not post this. Please do not attribute your quotes to me. I know that message boards are an awkward medium, but let's be accurate about who said what.
So if Abraham had killed Isaac, would that have been morally virtuous?
The will to obey God was virtuous, but God told Abraham not to kill Isaac because that action would not have aligned with God's moral law.
You previously argued that God's will determines what is good. Whatever God's will is, that is morally good. Right?
Alright, so God commanded Abraham to kill Isaac, but you're saying that even though God commanded Abraham to kill Isaac, God's will was not that Abraham would kill Isaac, but instead that Abraham not kill Isaac. Correct?
So to clarify: you are saying that God can command things that are contrary to God's will.
If that is the case, then God's commands are not accurate indicators of God's will. By your argument, even if God commands us to do something, we have no idea whether it is morally correct or morally incorrect, because God not only could command someone to do something morally wrong, but has actually done so before.
Yes, if God decreed that is what morality is, then that is what morality would be.
is false, because, according to what you just said, what God decrees can sometimes be the complete opposite of God's will.
Highroller, if you don't understand how my proposition answers your objection, then you are way in over your head here. In philosophy there is no universal agreement on how to define "free will" or "can." I would define "can" as "If an agent x chooses to do an action A, then x will do A." Operating under that definition immutability and free will are not contradictions. And when I say immutability that simply means that God does not change. What you must understand is that the entire concept of free will is stated in the form of a conditional statement, which is why my previous post was relevant and not just a red herring.
The other consideration is that God is not stating a universal moral principle in the story of Abraham. God's command is specific for that specific individual, time, and place. So what I am saying is that Abraham's situation is not equivalent to God delivering the 10 commandments at Mount Sinai and having one of the commands be "Thou shalt take your son on the 8th day and sacrifice him on the altar to me."
So the reason I answered you the way that I did is if God's moral law remains unchanged (as it is written in the 10 commandments and the gospels) then it would be immoral for Abraham to have killed Isaac. However, it would have been perfectly moral if God's universal moral law had been modified to say that such an action is moral.
Highroller, if you don't understand how my proposition answers your objection, then you are way in over your head here. In philosophy there is no universal agreement on how to define "free will" or "can." I would define "can" as "If an agent x chooses to do an action A, then x will do A." Operating under that definition immutability and free will are not contradictions. And when I say immutability that simply means that God does not change. What you must understand is that the entire concept of free will is stated in the form of a conditional statement, which is why my previous post was relevant and not just a red herring.
Astounding. You still ignore the contradiction.
You said that God's will could not change unless God changed. You said that God never changes. You also acknowledged that God could change.
So which is it? Is God immutable, or does God change?
The other consideration is that God is not stating a universal moral principle in the story of Abraham. God's command is specific for that specific individual, time, and place. So what I am saying is that Abraham's situation is not equivalent to God delivering the 10 commandments at Mount Sinai and having one of the commands be "Thou shalt take your son on the 8th day and sacrifice him on the altar to me."
So the reason I answered you the way that I did is if God's moral law remains unchanged (as it is written in the 10 commandments and the gospels) then it would be immoral for Abraham to have killed Isaac. However, it would have been perfectly moral if God's universal moral law had been modified to say that such an action is moral.
Dude, this is just sad.
You said that if God commands something, it is morally correct. Well we now have instances in which God commands something contrary to God's will, meaning God can command something morally incorrect, thereby making God's commands unreliable, as they are no longer clear indicators of God's will.
And this is where we know someone is flailing and desperately grabbing at straws, because you then responded that God's command to Abraham doesn't count? That somehow the tablets written on Mount Sinai are the real God's commands, and God's command to Abraham — let me repeat that for emphasis — God's command to Abraham somehow doesn't count?
Seriously? Isn't it a clear sign that something's wrong with your idea that "God commands things, therefore they are correct" if it requires us to ignore God's commands?
You've stated that if God commands something, then it's correct even if it invalidates a previous command. Now you're saying that the 10 Commandments somehow take priority over the other commands? That's not what you were arguing before. That's a contradiction.
You specifically stated that if God commands something, then it supersedes any previous command. Therefore, it doesn't matter whether it was written in the 10 commandments or the Gospels or wherever. That's totally irrelevant, because you specifically said that if God tells us to go murder each other and nuke the world, which is in contradiction to both the Gospels and the Ten Commandments, that it would still be the moral thing to do, at least until God tells us otherwise.
You're trying to backpedal, but it's not going to work.
You said that God's will could not change unless God changed. You said that God never changes. You also acknowledged that God could change.
So which is it? Is God immutable, or does God change?
Highroller, as I said earlier you are way in over your head. Go read A.J. Ayer and read his argument for compatibilism and get back to me. Also read my argument from earlier where I prove logically using proof tables that what you just claimed is a contradiction absolutely is not a contradiction.
You said that if God commands something, it is morally correct. Well we now have instances in which God commands something contrary to God's will, meaning God can command something morally incorrect, thereby making God's commands unreliable, as they are no longer clear indicators of God's will.
And this is where we know someone is flailing and desperately grabbing at straws, because you then responded that God's command to Abraham doesn't count? That somehow the tablets written on Mount Sinai are the real God's commands, and God's command to Abraham — let me repeat that for emphasis — God's command to Abraham somehow doesn't count?
Seriously? Isn't it a clear sign that something's wrong with your idea that "God commands things, therefore they are correct" if it requires us to ignore God's commands?
I am not saying that God's command to Abraham does not count, and I don't think that we should ignore it. You are just purposefully missing the point of the passage to reach your desired goal of a contradiction. As I said earlier it requires both logic and faith to know God.
Tell me. Did Abraham obey or disobey God? Did God count Abraham's obedience or disobedience as moral or immoral? If you are honest with your answers to those questions, then it will lead you to the flaw in your argument. My argument back at you is that obedience to God's commands has never been interpreted as an immoral act by God. So we can be confident that what is moral is to be obedient to God's commands. So my position remains consistent, and your objection is purely trivial. There is not one instance in human history that you can come up with where a person obeyed God and was punished because of that obedience to God. So we still know that obedience to God's commands is always moral.
You said that God's will could not change unless God changed. You said that God never changes. You also acknowledged that God could change.
So which is it? Is God immutable, or does God change?
Highroller, as I said earlier you are way in over your head. Go read A.J. Ayer and read his argument for compatibilism and get back to me. Also read my argument from earlier where I prove logically using proof tables that what you just claimed is a contradiction absolutely is not a contradiction.
You have done nothing of the sort, because you consistently ignore the details that would cause your argument to collapse upon itself, a common problem with you, though not surprising given your religious beliefs seem to require you to believe you're infallible.
Once again, you said God's will could only change if God changed, and that God is immutable, meaning he never changes.
At no point do you even bother to address this. Does God's will change, or does it never change? Does God change, or does he never change?
Free will is completely irrelevant to this question.
I am not saying that God's command to Abraham does not count,
Yes, you are.
Quote from cloudman »
The other consideration is that God is not stating a universal moral principle in the story of Abraham. God's command is specific for that specific individual, time, and place. So what I am saying is that Abraham's situation is not equivalent to God delivering the 10 commandments at Mount Sinai and having one of the commands be "Thou shalt take your son on the 8th day and sacrifice him on the altar to me."
You've recognized that your argument collapsed, and, given that your religious beliefs seem to revolve around the principle that "cloudman is infallible and therefore cannot be wrong," you have attempted to create qualifiers.
Except you cannot do that, because you have specifically said that God's commands are moral law when they are issued, even if they contradict every command previous.
So it doesn't matter which command it is or what it's written on. If it's the latest one, that's the one you go by, especially if it contradicts the 10 Commandments. Again, this is your argument.
and I don't think that we should ignore it. You are just purposefully missing the point of the passage to reach your desired goal of a contradiction.
I love how you're trying to make it my fault that you're contradicting yourself.
Tell me. Did Abraham obey or disobey God? Did God count Abraham's obedience or disobedience as moral or immoral? If you are honest with your answers to those questions, then it will lead you to the flaw in your argument. My argument back at you is that obedience to God's commands has never been interpreted as an immoral act by God. So we can be confident that what is moral is to be obedient to God's commands. So my position remains consistent, and your objection is purely trivial.
You're still not addressing the issue.
1. God commanded Abraham sacrifice Isaac.
2. You have argued that God's will was that Abraham not sacrifice Isaac.
3. You have argued that behaving in contradiction to God's will is immoral.
The first problem this raises is the idea that God can command things contrary to his will. If this happens, then God's commands can be immoral, and are therefore unreliable. No longer are God's commands an accurate indicator of God's will, and therefore the statement "things are good because God commands them" is invalidated.
The second problem this raises is that if you are to then add to statement 1 above that Abraham was morally good for following God's command, then you have a situation in which Abraham was both morally correct AND morally incorrect at the same time. This is a contradiction.
There is not one instance in human history that you can come up with where a person obeyed God and was punished because of that obedience to God.
Pharaoh's a pretty obvious one.
So we still know that obedience to God's commands is always moral.
Why, because God doesn't punish those who disobey God's commands? That doesn't prove that it's moral. That just proves God doesn't punish people who follow him.
I'm pretty sure powerful men across history have refrained from punishing those who obey their commands. That doesn't make it moral to follow them.
Indeed, many stories in the Bible describe those who might not receive punishment if they renounce their faith and behave immorally, yet do they chose the punishment anyway. The story of the woman and her seven sons, as well as the entire concept of martyrdom, corresponds to exactly this. So clearly whether or not one receives punishment does not mean one is behaving morally.
You have done nothing of the sort, because you consistently ignore the details that would cause your argument to collapse upon itself, a common problem with you, though not surprising given your religious beliefs seem to require you to believe you're infallible.
Once again, you said God's will could only change if God changed, and that God is immutable, meaning he never changes.
At no point do you even bother to address this. Does God's will change, or does it never change? Does God change, or does he never change?
Free will is completely irrelevant to this question.
When you introduced the word "can" into your argument, free will became relevant. Asking if God "can" do something is a question of free will. The proposition that God "can" do A vs. the proposition that God does not do A are totally different propositions. There is nothing inconsistent with saying that God "can" do A, but does not do A. You interpreted "can do A" as "do A," when in fact the two are not equivalent propositions. That is the problem with your argument. That is the problem with your debate technique in general. You do a poor job of logically interpreting and representing arguments, which in turn leads you to jump to conclusions that simply are not valid like the one you jumped to above. You'd be a better debater if you were a better listener and actually tried to understand the other side. As is, the way you debate is unreasonable because you misinterpret people's arguments and then insist that your misrepresented interpretation of their argument is their argument.
I have proved your supposed contradiction is not a contradiction. If you could interpret arguments you could see this, but you are proving that you lack in this area. Blinking Spirit and everyone else on this forum who disagrees with me would have jumped to your aid and pointed this out if I had not proven you wrong. No one has dared touch it because it is logically flawless. You either don't want to touch my argument because it logically holds or you really don't have the command of logic that you think you do.
You have done nothing of the sort, because you consistently ignore the details that would cause your argument to collapse upon itself, a common problem with you, though not surprising given your religious beliefs seem to require you to believe you're infallible.
Once again, you said God's will could only change if God changed, and that God is immutable, meaning he never changes.
At no point do you even bother to address this. Does God's will change, or does it never change? Does God change, or does he never change?
Free will is completely irrelevant to this question.
When you introduced the word "can" into your argument, free will became relevant. Asking if God "can" do something is a question of free will. The proposition that God "can" do A vs. the proposition that God does not do A are totally different propositions. There is nothing inconsistent with saying that God "can" do A, but does not do A. You interpreted "can do A" as "do A," when in fact the two are not equivalent propositions. That is the problem with your argument. That is the problem with your debate technique in general. You do a poor job of logically interpreting and representing arguments, which in turn leads you to jump to conclusions that simply are not valid like the one you jumped to above. You'd be a better debater if you were a better listener and actually tried to understand the other side. As is, the way you debate is unreasonable because you misinterpret people's arguments and then insist that your misrepresented interpretation of their argument is their argument.
I have proved your supposed contradiction is not a contradiction. If you could interpret arguments you could see this, but you are proving that you lack in this area. Blinking Spirit and everyone else on this forum who disagrees with me would have jumped to your aid and pointed this out if I had not proven you wrong. No one has dared touch it because it is logically flawless. You either don't want to touch my argument because it logically holds or you really don't have the command of logic that you think you do.
Whoa whoa whoa -
Don't drag other people into this with the false belief that you're argument is "flawless"
The only reason some of us haven't interjected might be because when we point out the times you are wrong or inconsistent, you happen to be too stubborn to get it, so we avoid debating you as much as possible.
That being said, I do not find fault in what you're saying.
Lets say that "My Will is immutable", this is a separate issue from "My commands are always consistent with my will".
I may always 100% want chocolate ice cream. My will for chocolate ice cream is immutable. This does not prevent me from asking my friend Jeff for strawberry ice cream from the store - as a test to see if Jeff will follow my "Will", or follow my "Commands".
In this way, if Abraham really knew God's will, and God's will was not to kill his son, he wouldn't have even tried to obey God's command.
So one could say, that maybe it was a test Abraham failed, because he should have known <God is benevolent and loving and would never will that I kill my own kid>, disobeyed God's command as a result, thus following God's will. God is happy.
Furthermore, even IF God's will was <that people are obedient to God>, it is still not contradictory. Because Abraham follows all God's commands. First God commands he kill his son - Abraham was actually going to do it - God changes his command - Abraham continues to obey God's commands, and stops. Abraham is obedient. God is happy.
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“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
When you introduced the word "can" into your argument, free will became relevant. Asking if God "can" do something is a question of free will. The proposition that God "can" do A vs. the proposition that God does not do A are totally different propositions. There is nothing inconsistent with saying that God "can" do A, but does not do A. You interpreted "can do A" as "do A," when in fact the two are not equivalent propositions.
And you still haven't addressed the argument.
Are you going for the record? Is there a world record for, "Longest time burying one's head in the sand refusing to address a contradiction in one's argument?" How many posts is it?
Once again, this is the post you refuse to address:
I wouldn't say that it is random. And I wouldn't call any of God's decrees arbitrary because there is no variance in God's character. God's moral law corresponds with God's attributes. God's moral law is a mirror by which we can see God himself. For example, if you look at the commands to love God and to love others, those naturally flow out of the doctrine of the trinity. Both of those commands have been embodied eternally in the triune God. If God was not a triune God, then that would be reflected in God's moral law.
So if God had a different set of attributes, then that would carry over and be reflected in God's moral law.
I'm confused. You said if tomorrow, God commanded us to murder and nuke each other, it would be morally correct. Moreover, it would be more morally correct on that day than not murdering each other, and equally as correct as not murdering each other would have been the day before.
So how does fit what you are saying here? You seem to be saying the opposite here, that God is eternal and unchanging, and therefore God's moral commands would not change unless God did, which, given that you seem to be arguing God never changes, would mean that God's moral commands would never change. Right?
I wouldn't say that it is random. And I wouldn't call any of God's decrees arbitrary because there is no variance in God's character. God's moral law corresponds with God's attributes. God's moral law is a mirror by which we can see God himself. For example, if you look at the commands to love God and to love others, those naturally flow out of the doctrine of the trinity. Both of those commands have been embodied eternally in the triune God. If God was not a triune God, then that would be reflected in God's moral law.
So if God had a different set of attributes, then that would carry over and be reflected in God's moral law.
By this logic, the only way God could give a different set of moral commands is if God's attributes were different, such as if God were not triune. This is almost like saying God could only give different commands if God were not God.
But this TOTALLY contradicts the statement you made on post #59. You acknowledged that God could change his mind, that God could give more than one set of moral commands. You argued this despite the fact later arguing that the only way for God to do this was for God to himself have different attributes, and that God is immutable, meaning he never changes attributes.
Well that's contradictory. If God is immutable, and the only way for God's will to change is if God changes, then God's will never changes. Therefore, to say it's possible for God's will to change is invalid. That would require God to change, and you have stated that God is immutable. So either God is immutable, or God's will could change. It cannot be both.
I've repeatedly asked you to reconcile these statements. And, to clarify, the statements are:
1. God's will could change
2. For God's will to change, it would require God to change
3. God is immutable, and therefore does not change
You have never done so, or even acknowledged the problem. Instead you've pretended the problem doesn't exist and have posted paragraphs of empty text in the hopes that no one would notice.
I will reconcile your original question by showing the following two statements can be simultaneously true:
#1: "X would be moral today and Y would be moral tomorrow if and only if God changed his moral law from X today to Y tomorrow." Lets call this statement q<-->r.
#2: "God's moral law would change from X today to Y tomorrow if and only if God's nature and attributes changed from A today to B tomorrow." Lets call this statement p<-->q.
So the corresponding row of the truth table that reconciles these statements looks like:
p, q, r, p<-->q, q<-->r
F, F, F, T, T
That is how I reconcile it.
See, even from the first sentence the problem is obvious. You state you're going to reconciletwo statements. Except I've asked you to reconcile THREE statements. And guess which statement you chose to ignore? Of course you chose to ignore statement #3, "God is immutable," because that's the statement that creates the contradiction that I've been asking you to reconcile!
You continuously fail to address this, and that's no surprise to anyone who's ever read your posts. You will always ignore any detail that will contradict you.
I have proved your supposed contradiction is not a contradiction. If you could interpret arguments you could see this, but you are proving that you lack in this area. Blinking Spirit and everyone else on this forum who disagrees with me would have jumped to your aid and pointed this out if I had not proven you wrong.
Both Blinking and Crashing00 pointed out you had no idea how to use logic tables previously in this thread, actually.
No one has dared touch it because it is logically flawless. You either don't want to touch my argument because it logically holds or you really don't have the command of logic that you think you do.
You would post something like this after blatantly ignoring people's posts that contradict yours, wouldn't you?
No, the fact of the matter is people dismantle your arguments regularly, cloudman. You simply refuse to acknowledge it.
Blinking Spirit and everyone else on this forum who disagrees with me would have jumped to your aid and pointed this out if I had not proven you wrong. No one has dared touch it because it is logically flawless. You either don't want to touch my argument because it logically holds or you really don't have the command of logic that you think you do.
And yet, for all Highroller may or may not be right in his position, he is not the one that believes that the correctness of an argument is decided by an applause meter.
For the record, I stopped posting about the main topic after quoting Lewis on the divine command horn of Euthyphro's dilemma (a point later expounded on very well by Highroller, in fact) because nobody has yet given a response to it that isn't pathetic. So interpreting silence as support for your position is a foolish notion. As for your own replies, they contain a number of readily apparent (onto)logical problems that all stem from that root.
For instance, you expose a crack in the very foundation of your belief structure in your explanation of God's behavior with respect to Abraham and Isaac. You take great pains to point out that God's actions were justified because of some ostensible future good outcome for humanity. But on divine command theory, that's circular! God's will doesn't need to reflect any future good for humanity -- by definition the execution of God's will is the good of humanity, irrespective of what his will is. It's good because He did it, full stop. Likewise, if God had never asked for the sacrifice, or if He never rescinded the demand at the last second, or if nothing even remotely resembling that story ever really happened -- all such outcomes would equally be the will of God and therefore all be equally good. You can repeat the same reasoning with any other act of God as well. For instance, if God had never sent Jesus in the first place, that would be as good as God having sent him. You mentioned God using Abraham as a tool to give a blessing to mankind -- that sounds nice until, of course, you realize that it would have been equally good for mankind if God had cursed mankind instead.
On the other hand, if you do believe that God's actions can ultimately be compared against some future good for humanity, then you must believe that there is a standard independent from God's will, namely this supposed future good.
If you don't like Lewis, try Leibniz: What cause could one have to praise God for what he does, if in doing something different He would have done equally well? How could you distinguish a command given to you by God from one given to you by the devil?
(None of this is even mentioning omnipotence, by the way. Why does an all-powerful God have to do something as stupid and evil as having a guy truss up his son for the slaughter in order to bring about this future good? Was there no other option available?)
Exactly the opposite. To argue God created logic is to argue that God exists outside of or independently from logic.
To argue this would be to argue that God, by virtue of being separate from logic, is not logical. To argue God is not logical would be to render any statement about God inherently meaningless. It would mean the statement "God is God" and the statement "God is not God" would be equally valid, as would any statement about God ever. We would not be able to create meaningful assertions about God, because there would be no logic to God.
Since there is a logic to God, we can state that God is logical. Since it does not follow that God created logic, we can presume that God's being logical is a quality inherent to God that God has always had.
We are dealing with a being that claims to have existed always.
As such, I see anything as possible.
Or perhaps he exists outside of our understanding of logic, in much the same way he supposedly exists outside of our perception of time and just about everything else.
Fair point.
Not if it contradicts logic.
Again, literally all statements about God become equally valid and invalid if we presume logic does not apply to God, including "God is God," "God is not God," "God created logic," "God did not create logic," and "oiehgoighoirhrinfiubuhgirhgrhlhirih."
Undoubtedly, but that is not the same thing as saying he exists outside logic. There is no "exists outside of logic." To say something exists is to make a statement about it, which one cannot do without logic.
Hammers look a bit silly too, if you think about it -- that is, until you've also seen a nail. For all it underpins our language, humans are pretty bad at basic logic when it comes down to it, because there isn't a straightforward intuition pump that will get you there. Logic is at the bottom of everything, making it difficult to get "underneath" it.
In a two-valued logic, where all statements come out either true or false, there are only sixteen (2^4) possible truth-functional relations between any pair of statements. You can find them all listed out on Wikipedia's article on truth tables if you like. Of those sixteen, only one of them captures the idea that "Q is true whenever P is true" -- and that's the one we call material implication.
It can easily be seen, by looking at these truth tables, that if you want to capture that idea you can't use any of the other ones. For instance, you may be thinking: why should we make conditionals with false antecedents true? Why not make them all false? Well, if you try that, you get the truth table for the AND operation -- and that's not what you want, because if you use the truth table for AND as the truth table for ->, then you could conclude using only the pure conditional "it is raining->I will bring my umbrella" the unconditional "it is raining." Clearly this is absurd and not what is meant by conditional reasoning.
As an exercise for your edification, repeat this for the 15 other possible truth tables. (Hint to speed your work along: you don't need to think about all 15 if you take advantage of symmetries.) You will find that all but one of them fail in some way to capture the meaning of the conditional -- and the one that captures it is the one that assigns "true" to all possible inputs except when P is true and Q is false.
There really isn't any deeper truth to it than that. Logic, like a hammer, is a tool; hammers are meant to pound in nails; logic is meant to capture modes of reasoning, thought, and language. The material conditional is the best possible effort in two-valued logic to capture the relation of consequence.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Why can't it be "unknown"?
Because it is utterly and completely irrelevant whether P is false for that particular conditional logic (P->Q)? And as long as Q remains Q, P->Q remains true?
Because classical logic is two-valued; it insists that everything be either true or false. Even if you personally don't know whether it's true or false, classical logic holds it to be the case that it is exactly one of those two, whether or not you are aware of it. This is known as the "law of excluded middle" and I caution you -- as tempting as it may be, do not toss it aside lightly.
Furthermore, in the present situation even this much is not the case, because we are not ignorant: since we know P is false, we know all that can be known about P->Q.
That's not necessarily the end of the story, though, because you can, if you wish, toss aside the law of excluded middle and attempt to analyze the situation in a nonclassical logic -- for instance, Lukasiewicz three-valued logic, which adds a third truth value that is intended to capture the semantic idea of "ignorance" or "unknown." The implication model of classical logic embeds in Lukasiewicz logic, though, so if you are certain of P's falsity, then you won't be ignorant about P->Q either. Off the top of my head I am not aware of a nonclassical propositional logic that deviates significantly from this implication model, but I think there probably is one.
You really must read the book I recommended to you in that PM! (Or consider making a new thread about basic logic in the Philosophy board.)
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Highroller, if you don't understand how my proposition answers your objection, then you are way in over your head here. In philosophy there is no universal agreement on how to define "free will" or "can." I would define "can" as "If an agent x chooses to do an action A, then x will do A." Operating under that definition immutability and free will are not contradictions. And when I say immutability that simply means that God does not change. What you must understand is that the entire concept of free will is stated in the form of a conditional statement, which is why my previous post was relevant and not just a red herring.
The other consideration is that God is not stating a universal moral principle in the story of Abraham. God's command is specific for that specific individual, time, and place. So what I am saying is that Abraham's situation is not equivalent to God delivering the 10 commandments at Mount Sinai and having one of the commands be "Thou shalt take your son on the 8th day and sacrifice him on the altar to me."
So the reason I answered you the way that I did is if God's moral law remains unchanged (as it is written in the 10 commandments and the gospels) then it would be immoral for Abraham to have killed Isaac. However, it would have been perfectly moral if God's universal moral law had been modified to say that such an action is moral.
Astounding. You still ignore the contradiction.
You said that God's will could not change unless God changed. You said that God never changes. You also acknowledged that God could change.
So which is it? Is God immutable, or does God change?
Dude, this is just sad.
You said that if God commands something, it is morally correct. Well we now have instances in which God commands something contrary to God's will, meaning God can command something morally incorrect, thereby making God's commands unreliable, as they are no longer clear indicators of God's will.
And this is where we know someone is flailing and desperately grabbing at straws, because you then responded that God's command to Abraham doesn't count? That somehow the tablets written on Mount Sinai are the real God's commands, and God's command to Abraham — let me repeat that for emphasis — God's command to Abraham somehow doesn't count?
Seriously? Isn't it a clear sign that something's wrong with your idea that "God commands things, therefore they are correct" if it requires us to ignore God's commands?
You've stated that if God commands something, then it's correct even if it invalidates a previous command. Now you're saying that the 10 Commandments somehow take priority over the other commands? That's not what you were arguing before. That's a contradiction.
You specifically stated that if God commands something, then it supersedes any previous command. Therefore, it doesn't matter whether it was written in the 10 commandments or the Gospels or wherever. That's totally irrelevant, because you specifically said that if God tells us to go murder each other and nuke the world, which is in contradiction to both the Gospels and the Ten Commandments, that it would still be the moral thing to do, at least until God tells us otherwise.
You're trying to backpedal, but it's not going to work.
Highroller, as I said earlier you are way in over your head. Go read A.J. Ayer and read his argument for compatibilism and get back to me. Also read my argument from earlier where I prove logically using proof tables that what you just claimed is a contradiction absolutely is not a contradiction.
I am not saying that God's command to Abraham does not count, and I don't think that we should ignore it. You are just purposefully missing the point of the passage to reach your desired goal of a contradiction. As I said earlier it requires both logic and faith to know God.
Tell me. Did Abraham obey or disobey God? Did God count Abraham's obedience or disobedience as moral or immoral? If you are honest with your answers to those questions, then it will lead you to the flaw in your argument. My argument back at you is that obedience to God's commands has never been interpreted as an immoral act by God. So we can be confident that what is moral is to be obedient to God's commands. So my position remains consistent, and your objection is purely trivial. There is not one instance in human history that you can come up with where a person obeyed God and was punished because of that obedience to God. So we still know that obedience to God's commands is always moral.
You have done nothing of the sort, because you consistently ignore the details that would cause your argument to collapse upon itself, a common problem with you, though not surprising given your religious beliefs seem to require you to believe you're infallible.
Once again, you said God's will could only change if God changed, and that God is immutable, meaning he never changes.
At no point do you even bother to address this. Does God's will change, or does it never change? Does God change, or does he never change?
Free will is completely irrelevant to this question.
Yes, you are.
You've recognized that your argument collapsed, and, given that your religious beliefs seem to revolve around the principle that "cloudman is infallible and therefore cannot be wrong," you have attempted to create qualifiers.
Except you cannot do that, because you have specifically said that God's commands are moral law when they are issued, even if they contradict every command previous.
So it doesn't matter which command it is or what it's written on. If it's the latest one, that's the one you go by, especially if it contradicts the 10 Commandments. Again, this is your argument.
I love how you're trying to make it my fault that you're contradicting yourself.
You're still not addressing the issue.
1. God commanded Abraham sacrifice Isaac.
2. You have argued that God's will was that Abraham not sacrifice Isaac.
3. You have argued that behaving in contradiction to God's will is immoral.
The first problem this raises is the idea that God can command things contrary to his will. If this happens, then God's commands can be immoral, and are therefore unreliable. No longer are God's commands an accurate indicator of God's will, and therefore the statement "things are good because God commands them" is invalidated.
The second problem this raises is that if you are to then add to statement 1 above that Abraham was morally good for following God's command, then you have a situation in which Abraham was both morally correct AND morally incorrect at the same time. This is a contradiction.
Pharaoh's a pretty obvious one.
Why, because God doesn't punish those who disobey God's commands? That doesn't prove that it's moral. That just proves God doesn't punish people who follow him.
I'm pretty sure powerful men across history have refrained from punishing those who obey their commands. That doesn't make it moral to follow them.
Indeed, many stories in the Bible describe those who might not receive punishment if they renounce their faith and behave immorally, yet do they chose the punishment anyway. The story of the woman and her seven sons, as well as the entire concept of martyrdom, corresponds to exactly this. So clearly whether or not one receives punishment does not mean one is behaving morally.
When you introduced the word "can" into your argument, free will became relevant. Asking if God "can" do something is a question of free will. The proposition that God "can" do A vs. the proposition that God does not do A are totally different propositions. There is nothing inconsistent with saying that God "can" do A, but does not do A. You interpreted "can do A" as "do A," when in fact the two are not equivalent propositions. That is the problem with your argument. That is the problem with your debate technique in general. You do a poor job of logically interpreting and representing arguments, which in turn leads you to jump to conclusions that simply are not valid like the one you jumped to above. You'd be a better debater if you were a better listener and actually tried to understand the other side. As is, the way you debate is unreasonable because you misinterpret people's arguments and then insist that your misrepresented interpretation of their argument is their argument.
I have proved your supposed contradiction is not a contradiction. If you could interpret arguments you could see this, but you are proving that you lack in this area. Blinking Spirit and everyone else on this forum who disagrees with me would have jumped to your aid and pointed this out if I had not proven you wrong. No one has dared touch it because it is logically flawless. You either don't want to touch my argument because it logically holds or you really don't have the command of logic that you think you do.
Whoa whoa whoa -
Don't drag other people into this with the false belief that you're argument is "flawless"
The only reason some of us haven't interjected might be because when we point out the times you are wrong or inconsistent, you happen to be too stubborn to get it, so we avoid debating you as much as possible.
That being said, I do not find fault in what you're saying.
Lets say that "My Will is immutable", this is a separate issue from "My commands are always consistent with my will".
I may always 100% want chocolate ice cream. My will for chocolate ice cream is immutable. This does not prevent me from asking my friend Jeff for strawberry ice cream from the store - as a test to see if Jeff will follow my "Will", or follow my "Commands".
In this way, if Abraham really knew God's will, and God's will was not to kill his son, he wouldn't have even tried to obey God's command.
So one could say, that maybe it was a test Abraham failed, because he should have known <God is benevolent and loving and would never will that I kill my own kid>, disobeyed God's command as a result, thus following God's will. God is happy.
Furthermore, even IF God's will was <that people are obedient to God>, it is still not contradictory. Because Abraham follows all God's commands. First God commands he kill his son - Abraham was actually going to do it - God changes his command - Abraham continues to obey God's commands, and stops. Abraham is obedient. God is happy.
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
And you still haven't addressed the argument.
Are you going for the record? Is there a world record for, "Longest time burying one's head in the sand refusing to address a contradiction in one's argument?" How many posts is it?
Once again, this is the post you refuse to address:
You stated that it's possible God could command tomorrow that torture and wanton nuclear bombing could be moral, and it would undo his previous command to not do those things. You did so on post 59: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=11055107&postcount=59
The problem with this is that this is directly contradicted by what you say here:
By this logic, the only way God could give a different set of moral commands is if God's attributes were different, such as if God were not triune. This is almost like saying God could only give different commands if God were not God.
But this TOTALLY contradicts the statement you made on post #59. You acknowledged that God could change his mind, that God could give more than one set of moral commands. You argued this despite the fact later arguing that the only way for God to do this was for God to himself have different attributes, and that God is immutable, meaning he never changes attributes.
Well that's contradictory. If God is immutable, and the only way for God's will to change is if God changes, then God's will never changes. Therefore, to say it's possible for God's will to change is invalid. That would require God to change, and you have stated that God is immutable. So either God is immutable, or God's will could change. It cannot be both.
I've repeatedly asked you to reconcile these statements. And, to clarify, the statements are:
1. God's will could change
2. For God's will to change, it would require God to change
3. God is immutable, and therefore does not change
You have never done so, or even acknowledged the problem. Instead you've pretended the problem doesn't exist and have posted paragraphs of empty text in the hopes that no one would notice.
Let's look at your response:
See, even from the first sentence the problem is obvious. You state you're going to reconcile two statements. Except I've asked you to reconcile THREE statements. And guess which statement you chose to ignore? Of course you chose to ignore statement #3, "God is immutable," because that's the statement that creates the contradiction that I've been asking you to reconcile!
You continuously fail to address this, and that's no surprise to anyone who's ever read your posts. You will always ignore any detail that will contradict you.
Both Blinking and Crashing00 pointed out you had no idea how to use logic tables previously in this thread, actually.
You would post something like this after blatantly ignoring people's posts that contradict yours, wouldn't you?
No, the fact of the matter is people dismantle your arguments regularly, cloudman. You simply refuse to acknowledge it.
And yet, for all Highroller may or may not be right in his position, he is not the one that believes that the correctness of an argument is decided by an applause meter.
For the record, I stopped posting about the main topic after quoting Lewis on the divine command horn of Euthyphro's dilemma (a point later expounded on very well by Highroller, in fact) because nobody has yet given a response to it that isn't pathetic. So interpreting silence as support for your position is a foolish notion. As for your own replies, they contain a number of readily apparent (onto)logical problems that all stem from that root.
For instance, you expose a crack in the very foundation of your belief structure in your explanation of God's behavior with respect to Abraham and Isaac. You take great pains to point out that God's actions were justified because of some ostensible future good outcome for humanity. But on divine command theory, that's circular! God's will doesn't need to reflect any future good for humanity -- by definition the execution of God's will is the good of humanity, irrespective of what his will is. It's good because He did it, full stop. Likewise, if God had never asked for the sacrifice, or if He never rescinded the demand at the last second, or if nothing even remotely resembling that story ever really happened -- all such outcomes would equally be the will of God and therefore all be equally good. You can repeat the same reasoning with any other act of God as well. For instance, if God had never sent Jesus in the first place, that would be as good as God having sent him. You mentioned God using Abraham as a tool to give a blessing to mankind -- that sounds nice until, of course, you realize that it would have been equally good for mankind if God had cursed mankind instead.
On the other hand, if you do believe that God's actions can ultimately be compared against some future good for humanity, then you must believe that there is a standard independent from God's will, namely this supposed future good.
If you don't like Lewis, try Leibniz: What cause could one have to praise God for what he does, if in doing something different He would have done equally well? How could you distinguish a command given to you by God from one given to you by the devil?
(None of this is even mentioning omnipotence, by the way. Why does an all-powerful God have to do something as stupid and evil as having a guy truss up his son for the slaughter in order to bring about this future good? Was there no other option available?)
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.