Argue against your own position!

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The OP also asked that you keep a more or less intellectually honest argument, so an argument that requires outright lies is going to be more questionable in this thread.

Interesting approach. However if God possess moral perfection he could not chose to create something that is outside of his own nature.



One can take all manner of factors or issues and place them all together, apply Occams Razor and declare God is the cause of all of them and that everything else is a less perfect solution. Who needs laws for gravity, or an explanation for the universe when God can just as easily explain them all.



Just because we do not have an answer, does not mean we cannot have an answer nor does it follow that the answer is supernatural. By assuming that some things have no naturalistic explanation you are begging the question, it is presupposing an answer to the point made in my previous question.

Why? If he can do it, what reason do you have to justify him making something completely dependent on him as opposed to independent? Also I don't see even use the word could not when discussing god. It most certainly is limited to would.

^^^^

Sorry if I was being a bit brief. Essentially if God were to create something that was not subject to his own personal perfection, then it would not be a personal perfection anymore. It would be the moral equivalent of making a stone so heavy he could not lift it. Thus it being a logical contradiction and most philosophy trained theists would argue that God cannot do the logically impossible.

I still don't understand, your argument is god cannot duplicate his own perfection? Wouldn't that make him more human than divine? If I've gotten that part right, why wouldn't he be able to do that?

^^^^^

Sorry it's pretty late where I am. My contention is that, God being perfectly moral cannot create people who are free from his morality. If were to do that his morality would not be perfect since a separate morality or lack of would exist apart from his own, God would then be guilty directly creating sin, in accordance with his own standard.

And yes I would agree that God cannot duplicate his own perfection. Since god is all powerful, creating something as powerful, would be to make himself no longer all powerful. This presents a logical contradiction, like a married bachelor.

Also if you assume gods perfect morality is a result of his omni-prescience then the scenario I stated above works for this point. You also assume that all powerful means he can do anything.(where if you treat all as all that exists(or all the exists in what he has created) you get a much more interesting definition.(which is too say why should anything outside of our existence count in all)) How do you logically create a moral system with no sin?(and is creating sin an actual sin? Is creating evil justifiable when it is necessary for the creation of good) You assume that an all powerful being would naturally conflict with another all powerful being.(you treat power as an actual resource that is used up from an outside force wheres a god limited by outside resources is not omni-potent, which is understandable considering that most of the power we get comes from outside forces.)

Understand also that it is not necessarily that a moral system must be split into good and evil from gods perspective just because that is how we naturally interpret such things.

Umm.... no. Your definition of "moral perfection" seems strange.


Well, the issue is that we can find laws for gravity. These intuitions, however, are rootless without God.


Well, the problem is just how the natural forces would work in relationship to these things. Evolution won't find its way to discovering external moral facts because moral facts are not moral by virtue of practicality. This means that if moral facts can be considered to exist, evolution is not sufficient. Similar explanations exist for other instances here. Even further, the matter of qualia is not one that you've contested.

Well, that's why there is free will, 91. What happened is that moral corruption entered the world through the immoral decisions of people and demons. However, as Genesis stated, God created the world and it is good. So, God isn't creating a "moral imperfection", he is merely creating beings who can choose.

Doesn't that also outright reject the requirement you imposed upon me?

After all, we both admitted before I posted the argument that what you asked for me was logically impossible in as far as we both understood logic.

Only if logic = truth or fact.

logic = valid inference. The truth of the premises is independent of whether an inference is valid or not.

Well, your argument kind of required that you ignore the contradiction of Arminianism. There are possible for Arminianism that don't require you to make false statements of fact, but the logic gets a bit tricky.

Part of the problem lies with the word "perfection" which is frequently used to make it nonsense. If a perfect God created a perfect Adam who, with his free will, could only make perfect decisions how come the mess in the Garden of Eden?

A perfect man is an imperfect woman, a perfect horse is an imperfect butterfly, etc. The word is meaningless.

You have already stated that objective or inter-subjective morality need not exist for the Christian God to exist. I find it interesting that you are now using the free will defense which presupposes that objective morality exists to defend your view. Are you not begging the question?

What is also worth clarifying is that I am not stating that God need create us morally perfect. I am however contending, in relation to AG's claim that God need not apply his own standard to us is logically contradictory since it is creating something that is beyond God's power and moral perfect. We need not be morally perfect but we must be held to an objective standard if God is to be morally perfect, all loving, totally just etc.



Why do you think that? What reasons can you give for thinking that your statement and conclusion are connected?