Philosophy Now Forum

Dubious wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2017 1:06 am

bahman wrote: ↑Fri Dec 15, 2017 10:12 pm God is love.

Is that the same as "God is Great" even when he kicks your ass to perdition!

Yes, such a contradiction.

thedoc wrote: ↑Fri Dec 15, 2017 11:42 pm

bahman wrote: ↑Fri Dec 15, 2017 10:12 pm

thedoc wrote: ↑Thu Dec 14, 2017 9:28 pm

It has been claimed that God created everything, and that would include both good and evil. What is the basis for your claim that God cannot be both good and evil?

God is love.

Have you ever heard of "tough love" when someone does something that appears bad, but is really for the other person's good.

What do you mean? You mean that God is love but his feeling is so strong that might look evil.

bahman wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2017 9:55 pm

thedoc wrote: ↑Fri Dec 15, 2017 11:42 pm

bahman wrote: ↑Fri Dec 15, 2017 10:12 pm

God is love.

Have you ever heard of "tough love" when someone does something that appears bad, but is really for the other person's good.

What do you mean? You mean that God is love but his feeling is so strong that might look evil.

It wouldn't be the first time that humans have interpreted things wrong. Scientists first thought the Jellyfish was a very poor swimmer and poorly adapted, then they discovered that the Jellyfish's manner of "swimming" was actually a very good way of feeding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwkgGPvClF4&t=100s

davidm wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2017 7:11 pm

Reflex wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2017 6:09 pm The OP is just silly rhetoric full of presuppositions.

It took an atheist like me to pinpoint the flaw in the OP, rather than do what you do — just throw out an unsupported rhetorical one-liner and call it a day.

It’s not clear that God can be an infinite number of ways, if he exists. If he can be an infinite number of ways, there is indeed zero probability that he can be any one way; BUT, as I explained (with two examples) “zero probability” does NOT mean impossible — though impossible does mean “zero probability.”

Also, the OP’s use of modal logic is fatally flawed.

You’re welcome, theists.

Was I wrong?

Reflex wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2017 8:15 am Was I wrong?

You were wrong in your methodology, not in your opinion.

We, philosophers, like to see reasoned arguments. Opinions are not reasoned arguments.

A guy may say "Immanual Can is an abuser of the other users of this site, by continually insulting their intelligence by constantly engaging in fallacious arguments and expecting to be taken seriously", and he is not wrong. Another person may say, "I.C. is an idiot not worth bothering with" is wrong, inasmuch as he does not give supportive arguments to his opinion.

This is the sense in which you were wrong.

And, BTW, DavidM's argument is invalid, too. Zero probability means impossible. But what is impossible is that we know what god is like if we have to choose from an infinite number of manifestations of god. But even if there is a possible infinite number of manifestations, god manifests at any given time only as one manifestation.

So god is not proven to not exist, the only thing that is proven, is that if there are an infinite number of ways god could manifest, in our esteem, but we don't know which one it is, then we have a zero chance of learning about the nature of god -- that is, it is impossible for us to know what god is like.

And indeed that is what most Christian-based religions teach. That god and his ways are inscrutable. Maybe they say that for different reasons, one of them is that god has the highest IQ there is, which is orders of magnitude bigger (higher) than man's. But that is a presupposition, much like the existence of a god.

Your assessment was not wrong, but you did not supply an explanation, and that was wrong. You were wrong in being merely reflexive, not reasoning your answer out to your readers.

thedoc wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2017 12:41 am It wouldn't be the first time that humans have interpreted things wrong. Scientists first thought the Jellyfish was a very poor swimmer and poorly adapted, then they discovered that the Jellyfish's manner of "swimming" was actually a very good way of feeding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwkgGPvClF4&t=100s

I agree. It wouldn't be the first time that humans have interpreted things wrong. Humans first thought that god existed. Then they discovered by reason that god actually does not exist.

(In other words, your argument is a fallacy; you don't treat the question, thedoc, but bring up a counter-example which is not applicable. You see the wrongness of your argument when you plug in things into the key parts of your argument and you get things that are diametrically opposed to your belief system, without even trying. If your argument was solid, then mine would be too. In form the two are equivalent. So either yours must be right, but then so is mine, or mine must be wrong, and then so is yours.)

If X is in the domain of the physical and X is physically impossible, then X has a probability of 0. If X is in the domain of the physical and has a probability of 0, then it is physically impossible, though logically possible.

So when we have a probability of 0 we should ask what domain this probability applies to, the physical or the logical.

I think this sounds correct.