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Objection (1)
God's moral goodness does not concern His feelings; rather they concern His action and the principle of His action. Thus premise (1) is false.
Answer:
Now it is true that sometimes in judging the moral quality of a person one takes account only of his action and the principle of his action. A person who did good deeds all of his life and who acted on moral principles would normally be considered a good person. But still we would consider such a person better if there were not envy or lust in his heart. In any case, it is inconceivable to the ordinary religious believer that God's good action and purpose should hide His feelings of lust and envy. People demand that in God at least--who is their moral Ideal--the feelings of lust and envy should not exist.
Objection (2)
If God had the feelings of lust and envy and this affected Him, this would indeed detract from his moral goodness. However, God because of His great powers need not let these feelings affect Him. Thus premise (1) is false.
Answer:
It is difficult to know what 'affect Him' means here. Envy and lust are feelings that must affect the person that has them. One need not succumb to such feelings to be affected by them. By definition they do have some effect, i.e. these feelings involve certain strivings in the person that has them. Just because God may never be overcome by these feelings is not enough. The mere fact that He has had them would take away from His moral goodness on the common view.
Moreover, unless God sometimes did succumb to envy or lust this would detract from His knowledge and He would know less than some men. To say Jones has known succumbing to lust is presumably to say that Jones once experienced this succumbing himself, i.e. he once succumbed. If God lacked this knowledge, He would know less than Jones in one respect at least.
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Objection (3)
God's knowledge is only propositional knowledge. Thus premise (3) is false.
Answer:
This argument seems to me to be mistaken at least as far as a common view of God goes. Indeed, I would argue that the more personal a view of God one has--and most ordinary people have a very personal view of God--the more mistaken this retort is. People who tend to think of God as a person naturally tend to think of Him as having many characteristics of persons and this includes the sort of knowledge that persons have. And this knowledge includes more than propositional knowledge.
Objection (4)
Since God is all powerful he can know lust and envy without having the feelings of envy and greed. Thus premise (4) is false.
Answer:
As I have already mentioned I am skeptical that philosophers have adequately characterized the ordinary notion of God and thus I am not sure that omnipotence is a property that most people predicate of God. But, in any case, as I understand the expression "He has known lust" it would be logically impossible for God to have known lust and not have had the feeling of lust. Presumably, even on the academic notion of God, God cannot do what is logically impossible.
(c) NOMOLOGICAL RELATEDNESS
The third feature of Hume's definition, the nomological condition ("every object like the cause produces always some object like the effect"), is also common to many definitions of causality. Hume's definition belongs to the line of reductive definitions that define causes in terms of laws of nature and a set of non-causal relations (such as temporal priority and spatio-temporal contiguity) between two particulars c and e.[2] According to these definitions, c is a cause of e only if there is a law of nature L that enables a statement that e occurs to be deduced from the premises that c occurs and that the law L obtains. For example, Carl Hempel writes[3]: "a 'cause' must be allowed to be a more or less complex set of circumstances or events, which might be described by a set of statements C1, C2, . . . Ck. ....Thus the causal explanation implicitly claims that there are general laws- -let us say, L1, L2, . . . Lk--in virtue of which the occurrence of the causal antecedents mentioned in C1, C2, . . . Ck is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of the explanadum event." A probabilistic law L may be permitted as well, in which case "to be deduced from" would be replaced by "to be inductively supported by".
However, the nomological condition for being a cause is logically inconsistent with a divine cause of the big bang, since God by definition is a supernatural being and his or her actions are not governed by laws of nature. Furthermore, the fact that God's willing is omnipotent makes "the big bang occurs" deducible from "God wills that the big bang occur" alone, without the need of any supplementary nomological premise, thus vitiating the condition that a nomological premise is a logically necessary condition for the derivation of the conclusion that the effect exists from premises one of which is that the causal event occurs.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that a system will always go from order to disorder unless there is a plan or outside intelligence to organize it.
World-renowned evolutionist Isaac Asimov when discussing the Second Law of Thermodynamics said:
"Another way of stating the second law then is: 'The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!'" Viewed that way we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself - and that is what the second law is all about."1
As Isaac Asimov says, everything becomes 'a mess ... deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself'. Now in complete opposition to one of most firmly established laws in science (the Second Law of Thermodynamics), people who support the theory of Evolution would have us believe that things become more organised and complex when left to themselves!
The five propositions below seem to be the most common misconceptions based on a Creationist straw-man version of evolution. If you hear anyone making any of them, chances are excellent that they don't know enough about the real theory of evolution to make informed opinions about it.
Evolution has never been observed.
Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
There are no transitional fossils.
The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance.
Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved.
Explanations of why these statements are wrong are given below. They are brief and therefore somewhat simplified; consult the references at the end for more thorough explanations.
Originally posted by smyleegrl
reply to post by Starchild23
Only pertains to the Christian God? Why so selective?
Originally posted by Iason321
reply to post by smyleegrl
Because men like to attack the one God who really does exist.
Why discount Vishnu or Thor or Zeus when noone believes in them?
Originally posted by Iason321
reply to post by Starchild23
How about you provide your Gods statistics?
How many people worship your God? How many Bibles have been written about your God?
If you say 1 and 0, then I have 0 necessity to provide "logical" proof of why my God (that 2+ billion people currently worship) is real, and why your "god" (who I take it,you alone worship) is not.
How about you provide your Gods statistics?
How many people worship your God? How many Bibles have been written about your God?
If you say 1 and 0, then I have 0 necessity to provide "logical" proof of why my God (that 2+ billion people currently worship) is real, and why your "god" (who I take it,you alone worship) is not.
Originally posted by Iason321
reply to post by smyleegrl
Because men like to attack the one God who really does exist.
Why discount Vishnu or Thor or Zeus when noone believes in them?
since God by definition is a supernatural being and his or her actions are not governed by laws of nature
Originally posted by Iason321
reply to post by iterationzero
You're wrong again, assuming Christians want to wage some kind of holy war.
That is the LAST thing any Christian I know wants to do.
Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
reply to post by Starchild23
since God by definition is a supernatural being and his or her actions are not governed by laws of nature
Ok, hang on...
who defined God as "supernatural"?
I don't see God as supernatural, but rather as the originator of all reality, including the natural world and the human perception of it.
Compared to the age of the universe, a human lifetime of a few decades is NOTHING. We, as a species, are still infants here... incapable of fully understanding the world around us.... no matter how "advanced" we are.
To put it simply, think of humans as micro-organisms.... our planet as a petri dish.... being observed by a higher powers who put us here.
edit on 3-4-2012 by sk0rpi0n because: (no reason given)
To be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent are not, to my understanding, natural qualities.
Since we are "natural" and we do not possess these abilities, that would make God "supernatural", would it not?
If you cannot define God, who are you to tell me my definition is in any way incorrect?
Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
reply to post by Starchild23
To be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent are not, to my understanding, natural qualities.
Since we are "natural" and we do not possess these abilities, that would make God "supernatural", would it not?
If God comes across as "supernatural" its because He did not endow us with omnipotence and omnipresence. We tend to assume what we don't understand as "supernatural" don't we?
If you cannot define God, who are you to tell me my definition is in any way incorrect?
You defined God as "supernatural", which means you have limited God to YOUR personal definition of "supernatural". If I cannot "define" God its because I can't.
God is beyond human understanding...or what has been framed as "religions".
God, as Creator of the human intellect is beyond what the human mind can conceive or imagine regarding His nature. No human, even with his religious books can begin to comprehend the real nature of God.
su·per·nat·u·ral/ˌso͞opərˈnaCH(ə)rəl/
Adjective:
(of a manifestation or event) Attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.
Originally posted by Iason321
reply to post by Starchild23
It's no wonder you'd be upset at us Christians waging war against the Deceiver, considering you're a part of his army and you don't even have the smarts to realize it.