Simon Paynton

It may in fact be illusory, but we experience it as free will.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Omnipotence and Omniscience still contradict free will

The omnipotence and omniscience of God would not contradict the free will of humans.  God could know what we are going to do, without us knowing.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
As an Omniscient, Omnipotent Being, God would know the outcome of how His human creations would act and indeed, would have made humans so they couldn’t act otherwise.

But the traditional Christian line, as far as I’m aware, is that God gives humans free will, to see how they will behave.  Is it really possible to have a…[Read more]

lol, everything looks better with pink eyes.

It’s perfect, as everything is perfect, as part of this scenario.  However, within the scenario, from subjective points of view, things are not perfect.  It’s not perfect if my dog gets run over.  It’s not perfect for me if I fail the moral test of life and go to hell.  From God’s point of view, everything’s running fine.

Kristina wrote:
Logically or even semantically, how does imperfection arise from perfection?

That’s the six million dollar question.  If “perfection” is a necessary element of the Ontological Argument, then it’s a flaw, since perfection is a human construct.  On the other hand, God is human-centred.

If the system you postulated is d…

[Read more]

I guess God had no choice but to create a spam shit-storm as well.

Playing Devil’s Advocate, who’s to say that it’s not perfect to create sin and sinful people?  This world is a test to see how well we cope with it morally.

Unseen wrote:
the advantage to the believer of the ontological argument is that it ties the atheist into knots.

You’re right, it is fiendish.  If it’s internally valid, then the external premises need to be looked at.

It sounds like you might be depressed, Ahmad.

Kristina wrote:
But as the iniquity grew, and there was no real semblance of it being due to performance or contribution, it was strange how okay we all were with it.

Learned helplessness, maybe.

Kristina wrote:
There is a question of why our psychology is so okay with inequity where it doesn’t make sense.

There are different kinds of fairness, which can conflict: e.g., equality, proportionality, or charity.

In fact, hasn’t the argument been proven to be internally consistent, using a computer?  So it’s hard to refute, and most attempts at refutation are going to be dumb.

I just watched the official Alvin Plantinga formulation.  I think, you could prove the existence of anything – say, orange unicorns – using the same logic.

I think the game is, “if you can refute it, you don’t understand it”.

Unseen wrote:
3) Since God’s existence is necessary, God cannot not exist.

It looks like a complete argument here.  “God is necessary, therefore God exists”.

Why is God necessary?  Because God is the most perfect being, and anything that is all-perfect is better than anything non-perfect, and is therefore necessary?  Lame.

It seems to me the answer consists of:

1) there is a most perfect thing in the universe; 2) the most perfect thing in the universe is God; 3) => God exists.

I find that to be a flimsy chain of reasoning.

PopeBeanie wrote:
what kind of evolutionary control, or guarantee is there that keeps cultures from having sex with a prepubescent (or for that matter newly-pubescent) member of their tribe or general population?

I’ve learned that in great apes, including humans, the females leave the group (or family) and join another, on reaching adulthood.