I didn't argue that necessary truths are dependant on Gods Will I argued firstly that if the universe is created by God than everything in it and all its laws were instituted into creation by him, and secondly that seeing as God is the first principle upon which all secondary principles are contingent that necessary truths are necessary because they are necessary to Gods divine nature. Ergo, it is impossible for God to do things that are contrary to his nature, and thus what is necessary is necessary ipso facto as a contingent result of the nature of God rather than because they pre-existed God. God wouldn't have the power to change them (although he would have instituted them into the universe he made, which was the main point I was trying to get across) but they would still be oriented around the divinity rather than being brute facts independent of him.
Thomas Aquinas puts it as such in your quote.
"The divine existence, however, upon which the nature of power in God is founded, is infinite, and is not limited to any genus of being; but possesses within itself the perfection of all being".
If God possesses within himself the perfection of all being, this would I think indicate that the necessary things are that inherently as a consequence of the reality of God, with impossibilities (such as the circle-square example) being impossible because they are anathema to the very nature of God himself as a contradiction of terms.
This is why, returning to the question of morality, I think that to say a moral principle (as an objective extrinsic reality as compared to a relative thing) cannot exist independently of God, since if something in a moral capacity is in fact a necessary truth, it is necessary because it is inherent to Gods nature and thus necessary. Now of course you go down later saying that possibilities aren't things, but I could come around and say that since God is eternal what is possible itself is not independent of God at all, since God has and always will exist, and what is possible proceeds from the absolute necessity of God. An alternative defence of my point would be that if God is the creator of everything (and if possibility is independent of the necessary existence of God), and noting that God had to institute the logical laws within the universe (by virtue of creating it) than independent necessary truths are intermediated via God, and thus in moral terms (if there is a necessary morality) we cannot say that those moral truths are independent from Him, only that they are necessary TO Him.
In saying all this by the way I don't think I am violating the thomist position (the standard theological one in Catholic circles) which is why I am answering it now. I will address the rest of it excluding of course the bit below which I think is related to this (presumably along with rest of the milieu's ) somewhat later when I have both the time and the rest (I'm writing this on no sleep thanks to insomnia) to ensure a modicum of coherency.
I've been trying to make sense of this in my mind since you made this post. I'm having a very hard time of it. Here is the problem.
You're suggesting, if I understand you right, that necessary truths and moral truths (and you seem willing to countenance at least that moral truths form a subset of necessary truths) gain their necessary truth from God, but not from his will - rather, from his nature. My problem is that I just can't visualise what this means. Take the necessary truth that 2+2=4, or the necessary truth that for any proposition P, it is not the case that P and not-P. The truth of neither of these requires an explanation. To understand them is to see that they must be true. What does it mean to say that they derive their truth from anything, let alone from God? What does God add to the equation? What explanatory value do you get from saying that their truth comes from God?
I'm also puzzled by the suggestion that their truth comes not simply from God but from God's nature. I can understand the claim that some truths derive from some things' natures. E.g. the truth that there's a lot of pointless war in the world derives, ultimately, from human nature. And I can see that some truths might derive from the divine nature. E.g. the truth that we should all worship God might be argued to derive straightforwardly from God's nature as uniquely holy. You could argue that we have an obligation to worship what is holy, and God alone is holy, therefore we should worship God. But how can you derive mathematical or logical truths from God's nature in this way? I can't even envisage what form the derivation would be.
You say that square circles are impossible "because they are anathema to the very nature of God himself as a contradiction of terms". But what makes them anathema to God's nature? The fact that they're a contradiction in terms? Then it's the fact that they're a contradiction in terms that makes them impossible, isn't it? You don't need to bring God's nature into it to see that. If there were no God, they'd still be a contradiction in terms and therefore impossible. You may say that if there were no God, contradictions in terms would be possible. But this is just begging the question, and it seems straightforwardly implausible.
It seems to me that once one starts thinking of God like this, you've come very close to making "God" such a general explanation for everything that the word loses most of its meaning. If an atheist says "Logical truths just are true, there's no explanation needed for this" and a theist says "Logical truths derive their truth from God's nature", is the theist actually saying anything that the atheist isn't? Aren't they basically saying the same thing? Hasn't "God's nature" become just a circumlocution for "the way things just are"?
In the line you quote from Thomas Aquinas, he says that God includes all being, and this means that his understanding contains all possibilities. They exist there as the divine ideas, which are really just the divine nature as it relates to things. However, Aquinas would not say that God determines what those possibilities are, either by his will or by his nature. At least, I don't think that's what he would say; perhaps I'm wrong. At any rate, it seems to me that the idea of God you've put forward is more like the Leibnizian one of God as (effectively) logical space.
On moral truths, I would ask this: do you think that an atheist can believe in necessary truths at all? Or is theism the only possible explanation for the fact that it's a necessary truth that 2+2=4 or that a proposition and its negation can't both be true? If you think that atheists can (legitimately) believe in necessary truths, then I don't see why you shouldn't accept that they can believe in moral truths as well (since you're suggesting that moral truths
are necessary truths, or at any rate that they all derive their truth from God in the same way). If you think that atheists can't legitimately believe in necessary truths then that seems to me a very implausible claim.
You're being needless reductive in your interpretation of what I said. What I'm saying that if there is a moral good that is necessary (which is what you asserted could exist and I was responding to that) that it would be so along the lines I explicated to some degree in the above section, rather than something that is not at all dependant on deity.
This being so, and a certain good being essential to God as a consequence of his nature, this moral good and imperative would then be instituted (commanded) by God by virtue of his creation (If a moral truth is necessary, than God being perfect obviously would command it). Summed up, It would be essential because Gods perfection and necessary nature demands it to be so, and be a moral obligation because he commanded men to do that moral good. The imperative would be of course along the teleological lines of sanctification and union with God, seeing as God made man in his image. Rightness and wrongness then are defined in terms of both divine perfection, the human persons progression towards perfection, which is what God intends, bringing us to the totality of "morality."
Rightness and Wrongness as a totality would presumably be determined in this conception as a product of God. God being the first, necessary and perfect principle would constitute that objective criterion by which rightness and wrongness are defined. With rightness being that which leads man closer to God and perfection, and wrongness that which leads man further away from God and perfection.
As I noted above, I will get to the rest and everyone elses later once I'm less sleep-deprived. Might as well not make this a total wall-post as well I suppose
I'm puzzled by this dual conception of morality. You seem to have returned to a divine command theory. You're saying that there are moral truths independent of God's will (but dependent on his nature), but these are distinct from moral obligations, which
are dependent on his will. Is that right? It seems a rather complex theory. I don't understand how there can be such a distinction between moral truths and moral obligations. If the moral truths aren't obligations (or aren't truths
about obligations), then what are they? I take it that if there are any moral truths, "Murder is wrong" is one of them, but if this doesn't mean "You have a moral obligation not to murder" then what does it mean? To put the question another way, if you think that moral truths derive from God's nature, then what is added by the notion that God then commands us to act in accordance with them?
Plotinus, has anything interesting happened with the Problem with Evil recently? Like even in the last few decades? Some new interpretation that people seem to enjoy and propagate?
The so-called "Irenaean theodicy" has become more popular in the past few decades, I think in large part due to the efforts of John Hick. Also, I think that philosophers in general have come to accept that there can be no deductive disproof of God from the existence of evil, rather that it can only be inductive. That is, the existence of evil doesn't prove that God doesn't exist, but it gives us a very good reason to think that he doesn't.
All right, you seem to be mainly an expert on Christianity, but I would like feedback on this anyway.
I'm currently making a Civilization IV mod where Great Prophets found religions, so I want to have the founders of religions be included in the Great Prophet list, too (Jesus, Buddha, etc). The problem is, since Islam is a religion in Civilization IV, this would logically include Muhammad as well, but Islam seems to have a ban on depictions of Muhammad. Would the inclusion of Muhammad in the game be offensive to Muslims?
I can't really say, but I don't think Muslims have any objection to Muhammad's name being included in lists; it's pictorial representation that they don't like.
This is more of a historical question, but when did Christmas become a 'holiday' in the current sense? What encouraged people to turn it into a 'holiday'?
That depends on what you mean, since "holiday" means different things in different countries. (In the US it seems to mean "festival", whereas elsewhere it means time off work.) It became a festival somewhere in the course of the fourth century and a minor day off work in the Middle Ages, I think. The modern celebration of Christmas really comes from the nineteenth century, perhaps above all from the 1840s, which is when the first Christmas card was invented and Dickens wrote
A Christmas Carol. You'll remember that in that story, Scrooge is annoyed when his employees ask for a day off work because it's Christmas, and I think that reflects how things were at that time - you'd probably get a day off work, but that's about it. Dickens' Christmas stories had a huge influence on the later development of the festival.
Also, of course, Christmas is celebrated very differently in different countries today, and has different significance in different countries. This even applies to the US and Britain - I think that Christmas is rather less significant in the US than in Britain, because the US has Thanksgiving. For us, by contrast, Christmas is like the American Christmas and Thanksgiving combined. Everything shuts down for a week.
1. Do you think that the anthropomorphism of religion, and the monotheistic religions in general, are a good criticism of them? I mean, yeah, obviously religious people would be more intelligent if they actively tried to avoid anthropomorphizing. But could it be argued that religion, theologically, is founded on it to some degree or the other?
I don't really understand what you're referring to here. What kind of anthropomorphising are you talking about?
2. What do you think of Daniel Dennett or his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon?
I don't know a great deal about him and I haven't read that book. His main contribution to philosophy is in philosophy of mind, which isn't my field.
3. Which belief systems (paganism, Abrahamism, etc.) generate the most animosity towards each other?
The ones that are most similar to each other. This is an unvarying rule in religion as in politics: people reserve the greatest hatred for groups that, to an outsider, seem exactly like them.
4. Were there any pre-modern attempts to make the monotheistic religions compatible? You know, like pluralism?
Yes, probably the best example would be Philo of Alexandria, who devoted his life's work to trying to show that the principles of Platonic philosophy can all be found (in allegorical form) in the Jewish scriptures. Platonism at that time was a form of monotheism and Philo believed that it had taken its best ideas from Judaism. Christian theologians such as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen would later all argue for much the same thing, the idea again being that pagan monotheism was derived from Christian (or Jewish) monotheism. Even some pagans thought this, notably Numenius. Others, such as Celsus, rubbished the idea and insisted that the Jews and Christians had got their ideas from Plato, degrading them along the way.
5. Do you think that a God would actively provide evidence (not necessarily solid proof) to people on Earth of his existence? One of the strongest arguments against theism, in my opinion, is that everything is as it would be if God didn't exist.
I'm not sure what God would or wouldn't do, but I agree that one might expect God to give people good reason to think that he exists. Of course, most religious people seem to think that he has done so, and they struggle with the idea that non-religious people disagree about this.
6. Do you think that attitudes towards religion in philosophical circles is overly influenced by tradition? Analytics have a history of atheism, for instance.
Everyone's overly influenced by tradition. But while it's true that analytic philosophers tend to be atheists, I don't think they become philosophers and then become atheists simply because there's a tradition of atheism in philosophy. Rather, I would have thought that the kind of people who are good at analytic philosophy are the kind of people who would tend to be atheists anyway, i.e. people who question accepted beliefs and prefer to believe only what the evidence supports. The same thing applies to scientists.
Are you familiar with Peter Rollins at all? I read his
Reddit AMA and I really have no idea what to make of him.
No, I'm not, but the AMA seems pretty interesting.
I have a question about a tiny chapter of the first book of the old testament. The story of the Tower of Babel...
In the text (hellenistic era translation; i cannot read the original of the old testament) the story seems to have a few key parts:
1) The people are all in one place, and speak one language (the language may be either literally a language, or a metaphor for other crucial cohesions).
2) The people there are aware that they may be dispersed around the world. They say "Let us build a tower so that we will make a name for ourselves before being dispersed/lest we be dispersed".
3) A god, speaking to itself in plural, sees the people, fears they may now achieve all they can imagine, and so urges its own self to confuse them by giving them many languages, and ultimately dispersing them.
4) The tower is left as it was. The people are dispersed as they feared.
Ok, now the question:
How can this story be seen as something positive? What kind of god would be happy to destroy the work the humans were up to, moreso when they are said to have known that they will be split and so they (maybe) only wanted to have a common monument so as to sometime lead them back to unity?
Thanks
I'm afraid you'd have to ask an Old Testament scholar that. My understanding of the story is that God is punishing the people for their arrogance in thinking that they can get to heaven through their own efforts. But I agree that in Genesis, at least, God doesn't really come across as a very positive character most of the time.
I actually saw the stories of Genesis as being prophecies, not a metaphor for any historical event, back when I was religious. Is that a plausible interpretation?
I haven't heard such an interpretation before; the church fathers thought that Genesis contained many allegorical or typological figures of future events (e.g. Noah's ark represents the cross of Christ, because it's made of wood and saves people), but they still thought these were historical events.
1) Why there is no mention of dinosaurs in the bible ? (None can give me a straight answear that I am satisfied with)
For the same reason that there's no mention of dinosaurs in Herodotus or Aristotle: dinosaurs had not been discovered when those texts were written.
2) How come Adam lived 100+ years and we are not able to do that ? Conspiration theory ?
The idea of people in the distant past having impossibly long lifespans is quite common in ancient Middle Eastern myths. You find the same thing in Sumerian myths such as Gilgamesh, and the Sumerian King List, which states that past kings ruled for thousands of years. The Old Testament is almost restrained by comparison.
3) Why does the Bible speaks to us in anegdotes instead of simple language that everybody can understand ? (Is it excluisive or what ?)
I'm not sure what you mean by this. The different books of the Bible are written in different genres, including poetry and novels and personal correspondence. Most of it's pretty simply written, I think. This is especially true of the New Testament, which was written (not always very well) in the form of Greek that most people spoke at the time. Some parts are rather tortuous, such as parts of Paul's letters, but this is because he was writing out some pretty tortuous lines of thought that evidently weren't always very clear in his mind when he started.
Of course, some translations of the Bible aren't so easy to understand, but that's the fault of the translators rather than of the original authors.
in Greek can also mean some quite impersonal connection, for example that between a magnet and small pieces of metal.
