|
Post by unkleE on Jul 13, 2011 11:21:02 GMT
They are important to some folk, like wekle above - and (some of them) were to me when I actually started thinking seriously about how intellectually robust my faith was. I share some of your pessimism about ever finding ultimate solutions to these problems; we're only human after all. On the other hand, when inquisitive, searching souls get turned away from Jesus by pieces of pigswill like evilbible.com, then I feel like I have a duty to try and shed some truth on the matter! Yes, I agree totally. Sometimes these matters are important to others, and I am happy to discuss them then. But I think God is so far different from us that there are some things we cannot possibly work out, e.g. - How can God have any choice when he can only do what is perfect?
- If we go to heaven in eternity, how can anything change, won't it be constant and therefore boring?
- Could God not have made the world a little better than it is?
- Why does our forgiveness require Jesus to die?
- Why does God exist?
- If God exists in eternity and out of time, what distinguishes the 'time' before the universe existed from 'now'?
- If God exists in eternity and out of time, how can it be possible and meaningful for Jesus to 'leave' heaven and come to earth for 30 years?
I could go on, as we all could. Some non-believers somehow think these sorts of questions make it difficult or even impossible to believe in God, but I can't see how that's logical. If God exists, we will be unable to understand a lot about him by definition, so the existence of difficult questions is as much confirmatory as difficult. The real question is, does God's existence explain anything better, and clearly it does - enough better to make belief a no-brainer in my view. But I get to that question without having any answers to most of the questions we are discussing.
|
|
|
Post by unkleE on Jul 13, 2011 11:24:49 GMT
But why is it better to be than not to be? You are unlikely to get an answer from the stone, but I can say on my own behalf that I think it is better for me that I exist, as I enjoy existing. This is not a facetious answer, as if Himself thinks it is better that the stone exists than not, then I don't think I agree with him, but I think we both agree about ourselves.
|
|
|
Post by elephantchang51 on Jul 13, 2011 11:34:17 GMT
Nor was it a facetious question,quotes like that get thrown around with a lot of certainty in philosophical discussions and seem,at least to me, to be unknowable and thus,meaningless..
|
|
|
Post by hawkinthesnow on Jul 13, 2011 18:27:28 GMT
Hawkinthesnow,just curious,on what grounds has Christian thought come to conclude that the universe or existence is 'good'?If 'evil',is an absence,then is the absence of this 'evil',also 'evil'? A good God would not create anything that was not good. In regard to evil, should have chosen my words more carefully. Evil is a privation rather than an absence. Absence implies mere lack. Privation involves the idea of the lack of something that there should not be a lack of. So a stone that cannot see has an absence of sight - it does not belong to the complete nature of a stone to have sight, therefore lack of vision is not, as such evil. However, a blind man suffers a privation - a privation of sight. That privstion is an evil. One could describe a cruel man as lacking in kindness, for example. This of course relates to the idea of everything having it's own essential nature. Humanity as originally created, had everything that belongesd to the nature of humanity as conceived by God, but as a result of the Fall, has no longer. As created by God, originally everything, in it's own nature was good. Thast is the Christian position. Of course, whether it is either consistent, or even true, is another matter.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2011 11:00:59 GMT
I guess ones raised in this discussion, such as: A perfect God would not need to create anything. A God who knows the future is powerless to change it. An omniscient God who is all-powerful and freewilled is impossible. God can't even feel emotions. Those aren't questions, Unklee, but claims of incoherency of the God concept. When people do make such claims, philosophy is needed to elucidate the divine attributes, to see if they carry any weight. You might find this meaningless and useless, since it doesn't touch your theism; but there's a certain group of men, however, who does want to make an impressive intellectual case that there's no God, and one can't just be uninterested at it or ignore it, or one will find oneself in a situation of being perceived anti-intellectual, irrational, or evasive - something those people want to achieve. I don't know about you, but I don't want that the opposite side has all the intellectual ammunition, while we believers sit in trenches (or hide under the pulpit). The last one is a theological issue. We might never have the fully answer, but we can still elucidate the issues with philosophical tools so that they can make sense to us. Ignoring them will cause the same thing that I mentioned in the first paragraph.
|
|
|
Post by jamierobertson on Jul 15, 2011 12:33:40 GMT
What Matko said.
|
|
|
Post by himself on Jul 16, 2011 17:22:56 GMT
# How can God have any choice when he can only do what is perfect? A thing is perfect to the extent that it fully actualizes its own nature. Thus, a triangle is perfect to the extent that it fully actualizes triangularity: straight lines of zero thickness, complete angles, etc. There is nothing that prevents God from creating a world of "motion." # If we go to heaven in eternity, how can anything change, won't it be constant and therefore boring? You are only bored when time passes. For time to pass there must be corruptible matter. In eternity, there is no matter, no passage of time, no boredom. # Could God not have made the world a little better than it is? Then there might not be the scope for perfection that there is. "Better" in what way, we might ask. More thrilling dangers? More opportunities for heroism? More chance for satisfaction at accomplishing a difficult task? Or less? # Why does our forgiveness require Jesus to die? It showed us that we did not need to follow revenge with revenge. That even faced with the most grotesque and horrible fate, we could still forgive and break the cycle. At least for those who follow in his way. In a sense, it did not require him to die; only that innate human selfishness kinda made it inevitable. # Why does God exist? Because anything that exists contingently must receive its existence from something that exists necessarily. There must be Existence Itself, as it were. Something that could say I AM. # If God exists in eternity and out of time, what distinguishes the 'time' before the universe existed from 'now'? There is no time "before" the universe existed since [by general relativity] time is a consequence of material existence. www.newadvent.org/summa/1010.htm#article4# If God exists in eternity and out of time, how can it be possible and meaningful for Jesus to 'leave' heaven and come to earth for 30 years? If Shakespeare exists outside the timeline of the play Hamlet, how would it have been possible to write himself into the play as a character, had he so chosen?
|
|
|
Post by unkleE on Jul 17, 2011 13:36:16 GMT
himself, Thanks for your answers to my "impossible" questions, but I'm sorry I find every one of your answers either: incomprehensible and/or not answering the question- A thing is perfect to the extent that it fully actualizes its own nature. Thus, a triangle is perfect to the extent that it fully actualizes triangularity: straight lines of zero thickness, complete angles, etc. There is nothing that prevents God from creating a world of "motion."
I don't understand.
- Then there might not be the scope for perfection that there is. "Better" in what way, we might ask. More thrilling dangers? More opportunities for heroism? More chance for satisfaction at accomplishing a difficult task?
I don't understand.
- You are only bored when time passes. For time to pass there must be corruptible matter. In eternity, there is no matter, no passage of time, no boredom.
This creates more problems than it solves for me.
- There is no time "before" the universe existed since [by general relativity] time is a consequence of material existence.
I don't see any answer here. or else I disagree with your answer- It showed us that we did not need to follow revenge with revenge. That even faced with the most grotesque and horrible fate, we could still forgive and break the cycle. At least for those who follow in his way. In a sense, it did not require him to die; only that innate human selfishness kinda made it inevitable.
This is one theory of the atonement, but I find it inadequate myself - it doesn't explain a lot of NT evidence.
- There must be Existence Itself
I still don't see why there couldn't be nothing at all. ever.
- If Shakespeare exists outside the timeline of the play Hamlet, how would it have been possible to write himself into the play as a character, had he so chosen?
In which case Shakespeare would exist in two places and two different forms at the same time. Surely you are not proposing that for Jesus?
So I think this kind of proves my original point.
|
|
|
Post by hawkinthesnow on Jul 17, 2011 17:57:51 GMT
# # Why does God exist? Because anything that exists contingently must receive its existence from something that exists necessarily. There must be Existence Itself, as it were. Something that could say I AM. I would question the use of necessity and contingency here as appled to beings. Propositions can be necessarily true, as in "All bachelors are single men", or contingently true "John the bachelor lives in a mansion". Even if a necessary thing exists, why not it might just be the universe?
|
|
|
Post by captainzman on Jul 17, 2011 22:55:06 GMT
The better question is why we should think the universe is necessary. I see nothing that suggests the universe is not contingent.
|
|
|
Post by fortigurn on Jul 18, 2011 4:01:40 GMT
This is one theory of the atonement, but I find it inadequate myself - it doesn't explain a lot of NT evidence. How familiar are you with participatory atonement theory?
|
|
|
Post by himself on Jul 19, 2011 0:04:45 GMT
# # Why does God exist? Because anything that exists contingently must receive its existence from something that exists necessarily. There must be Existence Itself, as it were. Something that could say I AM. I would question the use of necessity and contingency here as appled to beings. Propositions can be necessarily true, as in "All bachelors are single men", or contingently true "John the bachelor lives in a mansion". Even if a necessary thing exists, why not it might just be the universe? a) The universe is not a thing per se, but a collection of things. The universe exists if any one thing exists. There is no such thing as absolute space and time, as if "universe" were a big empty box into which things are placed. b) Given that, everything in the universe is clearly contingent. That is, it might not have been. Stars, for example. This star or that star might not have formed if the gas cloud had been distributed differently. Indeed, no stars at all might have formed if the gravitational constant and radiation pressure were different. c) Beside which the necessary being turns out to be identical with the unchanged changer, and the things that comprise the universe are changing. d) So it can't be the Universe.
|
|
|
Post by himself on Jul 19, 2011 2:29:36 GMT
himself, Thanks for your answers to my "impossible" questions, but I'm sorry I find every one of your answers either incomprehensible and/or not answering the question Brevity is the soul of wit, but the mother of incomprehension. Let me try: 1. The puzzlement was the assertion that a perfect being must produce a perfect thing. Now, I can see that an imperfect being cannot create a perfect thing, but the contrary is not logically barred. Perfection is not some fuzzy state of rainbows and fluffy bunnies but, as the example of the triangle implied, attaining to all that the nature of a thing requires. We recognize this when we say someone is a "good" doctor to the extent that he achieves the qualities of the ideal doctor, i.e., the perfections of doctor-ness. If a world is created short of perfection, then the creatures in it find scope for perfecting themselves. 3. As to whether God might have created a world better than it is, I simply asked in what way "better" might be defined. More thrilling dangers to overcome? More opportunities for heroism? More chance for satisfaction at accomplishing a difficult task? Perhaps the writer of those questions never thought of these things as being better. 2. The original question was whether one could be bored in eternity, and I simply pointed out that boredom requires the passage of time ["the measure of motion in corruptible being"] and in eternity there is no passage of time. What other problems this creates for you must then be further specified. 6. The original misunderstanding was "what distinguishes the 'time' before the universe existed from 'now'?" I simply pointed out that there is no time before the universe existed. It's like asking what distinguishes the north beyond the north pole from the north on the rest of the earth? 4. The question was "Why does our forgiveness require Jesus to die?" You responded This is one theory of the atonement, but I find it inadequate myself - it doesn't explain a lot of NT evidence. But you did not originally specify that you wanted a particular answer, nor that it had to be a sola scriptura sort of answer, esp. as personally interpreted. 5. In answer to the question "Why does God exist?" I answered There must be Existence Itself and you responded: I still don't see why there couldn't be nothing at all. ever. But then there would be nothing at all now. In which case, who are you and who are you posting with? Since none of these things had to exist, they must have received their existence from something else. But something cannot give what it does not have, so the source of existence must itself exist in some sense. There must be a being whose essence just is to exist. We may call it Existence Itself. If it could talk, it would call itself "I AM." To say that Existence Itself does not exist would seem contradictory, to say the least. 7. The original lacuna in knowledge was If God exists in eternity and out of time, how can it be possible and meaningful for Jesus to 'leave' heaven and come to earth for 30 years? I answered with an analogy: namely, that Shakespeare could have easily decided to make himself a character in Hamlet. For all we know, Horatio is Shakespeare infictionated. But being unfamiliar with analogy, you tried to extend it to an equivalence, which is common in these days since the analogy questions were dropped from the SATs. You wrote: Shakespeare would exist in two places and two different forms at the same time. In which two places in the play Hamlet would the infictionate Shakespeare and the incarnate Shakespeare exist? One of them does not exist in the world of Hamlet at all. Shakespeare's writing desk is not a location in the play. Further, the infictionate character exists also in the mind of the incarnate Shakespeare, and so it participates in the same nature as he does. And so it is said: Jesus had two natures [fully divine and fully human], but was one person [Jesus]. Similarly, an infictionate Shakespeare would have had two natures [fully human and fully fictional], but one person [Shakespeare]. I don't see what the big puzzle is.
|
|
|
Post by unkleE on Jul 21, 2011 2:22:36 GMT
Quick answer: not very. Longer answer: I am discussing with himself whether some philosophical questions can be answered and are worth asking. I feel the same about some theological questions too, and I am on less shaky grounds here as I have at least formally studied a little more theology than I have philosophy. My somewhat Philistine view is that much theology is speculative, faddish, or obscure in value. As a follower of Jesus, I think the things we know from his teachings that we should be following are clear, and mostly ignored. When we start doing better at these clear things, then we may have time and reason to dally with less fundamental things. Of course I know that is an exaggerated view, and I don't hold to it fully, but it gives the flavour of my thinking. And I accept the comment by himself that sometimes we have to engage with opposing views on their grounds. My thinking on the atonement is shaped by two people I have read/heard. Tony Campolo said in a talk I heard that there had been several theories of the atonement down the ages, and we didn't need to be wedded to one. CS Lewis says in Mere Christianity that the essential of christianity is believing in the atonement, not in any particular theory of it. So I have concluded that the atonement is to a large degree a mystery, that all theories are analogies, and all probably contain truth, some more than others. From what I read in your reference (thanks for it, I'll keep looking you up now I've found you), I agree with the idea that we have to participate in the sufferings of Jesus, but I don't dismiss the penal substitutionary theory either. Thanks.
|
|
|
Post by unkleE on Jul 21, 2011 3:04:43 GMT
Brevity is the soul of wit, but the mother of incomprehension. Let me try: I enjoyed the pithy comment, and I appreciate your interest, but .... This illustrates why I think these discussions can be interesting and diverting, but often of little value. I think the opposite of what you say here. An imperfect person may, occasionally, produce something that is perfect, but it seems to me that God will always choose the best course because he is ethically perfect, in which case, human reason would suggest he has a massive task of computing all the consequences of any action and assessing and balancing the good and bad which may result, but then he has no choice but must choose the "best" outcome. Perhaps we are confusing different uses of the words "good" and "perfect"? I meant ethically better - less suffering and sin. Action and change also require passage of time (I would have thought), so on the same logic, there can be no action or change in heaven. Which I think would be boring. I suggest we really don't know anything about heaven, including whether it is temporal (as Richard Swinburne apparently thinks) or timeless, or whether in fact it is something different altogether (which I think must be true, which makes all our theorising totally pointless). Again, I think you have too quickly simplified and explained. I put 'time' in inverted commas because I knew standard thinking says there was no time 'then'. But when we theists use first cause type arguments, we dismiss (I think rightly) the idea that the universe could be causeless - with the picture in our mind of God existing and being the cause that began the universe. I know some cosmological arguments use cause in a timeless or eternal sense, but I think it makes no sense to say that God created without also saying that there was a state (let's not call it a time) when God existed and his decision to create had not been actualised. I understand, albeit imperfectly, that there is a good argument from what exists to a creator. My futile question was Could it have been the case that God didn't exist and nothing ever existed or ever will? God is postulated as a necessary being, i.e. if he existed he necessarily exists, but could he not have existed? I think the naswer must be "no", but I think thinking about it is more likely to bust my brain than yield any useful conclusions. Well in reality, no-one in the play exists in the play at all. So the parallel is invalid. The puzzle is that Shakespeare's existence in the play is an illusion,and he could exist in a thousand such illusions with in any way being real or affecting the real Will. But Jesus' existence in heaven as eternal Son is not an illusion any more than his appearance on earth as a man was. Was he in two places at once? If he was in a timeless heaven, then how could he leave it?? We could go on, couldn't we, but I see little purpose. I don't even understand my own thoughts and motive sometimes, how could I expect to understand God?
|
|