Hey again Philovoid,
thanks for considering my thoughts and for your thoughtful responses!
Do I have a reputation as a Grammar Nazi?
I think your grammar is excellent - but then I am not a native English speaker myself (so who am I to judge this?), and I´m sure everyone here needs quite some patience with my clumsy grammar (and I do appreciate that a lot!). Anyway, I think I understand what you are saying quite fine.
Allow me to make some general remarks which do not directly address any particular statement of yours, for starters.
1. It seems to me that it was careless of me not to first ask the question you find below my username: "God? What do you mean??". I always forget about that, and find myself regretting it later.
I have understood you saying that you want to keep theology out - as far as that´s possible (and, as I said, I do like that approach), so I am assuming that means we are trying to keep the god concept as generic as possible.
However, already at this point of the discussion, I can´t help the feeling that this is not possible (because I see theological subtleties creeping in at every turn).
If we keep all keyterms involved undefined, we are basically going to just shift meaningless words around.
Thus, I would encourage you to define "God" (i.e. give the properties we are supposed to assume It to have), for purposes of this our contemplations. We should then keep strictly to this definition, without adding further definitional premises as we walk along.
2. For a long time I used to value philosophy for it´s intellectual "pureness" (in lack of a better term), i.e. the attempt to occupy itself with strictly abstract thoughts - without anticipating any practical, concrete implications or applications. This has, to a large degree, changed. Actually, I don´t even believe anymore that this is what philosophy is really doing; nobody would occupy himself with useless abstractions. There´s no point at all in having philosophy lead an isolated life of it´s own in the ivory tower, so to speak.
Thus (albeit still having a knack for abstractions and intellectual hypotheticals) in view of philosophical questions, dilemmas, etc. I find myself asking: "What´s the use of this question? What´s the purpose of asking it? What´s the context in which an answer might help us with anything?".
3. I don´t think I have any use for the word "good", unless we give it a frame of reference or a context first. The frame of reference that we have come to use it in is human existence, and the relationship of humans to their environment (and fellow beings). IOW it´s a human word, pointing to human concepts, developed in the context of human experience.
First problem: This renders the attempt to apply it to a supposedly "beyond" entity questionable, to begin with. We don´t get to strip a word/concept of all contexts and frames of references in which we have developed it - and then still expect it to be meaningful. ("What does 'car' mean if applied to a thing without wheels, without a motor, without seats...?", or even worse: "What does 'car' mean when used to signify a spiritual entity?").
4. (and now I´m slowly working my way back to the actual topic): I am sensing that we (or at least I) have no use for the word "good" without an explicit or implicit "good
for..." or "good
to..." (which may actually be the reason why you brought up the topic altogether). Which, of course, can include past and anticipated manifestations (we call a thing "good" even though it might not serve us at this very moment, but did so once, or because we have an idea how it will serve us in the future).
IOW: an eternal, immutable God sitting there in the midst of nothing - what can It possibly be "good for or to" - particularly if we take ourselves (the authors of the concept "good") out of the picture (as does your hypothetical)?
It is a possible position to hold, although I don’t think we can impute a god-entity with evil as a default position; in this case we’re really beginning prima facie with some kind of amoral state.
Yes. I don´t think at this point we have any basis for valuating such an entity.
Within the confines of an abstract analysis (i.e. an analysis undertaken without the benefit of any clarification that may come through some kind of ‘revelation,’) I think the most we can say is that, prior to any kind of creation, the god-entity wasn’t ‘good’ in a way in which we would typically understand or depict ‘It’ to be. On the other hand, if we’re going to ask if a god-entity was good prior to creation, we also need to ask this of the possible ‘Good’ was prior to creation. Did some kind of good exist prior to creation? If so, where was it—intrinsic in relation to the god-entity, or extrinsic to the god-entity? Did ‘the Good’ even exist in a way we could understand it now.
I´m always running into the same problem, Philovoid: Why would we strip a word/concept off any context or frame of reference in which it is meaningful to us, yet expect it to be meaningful to us? Plus: If we postulate it to be meaningful in a way that´s not meaningful to us - why are we using a human word that comes with a ton of human meaning?
Anyway, in view of my above point #4, if knowing that this "God prior to creation" would at some point create something we have come to valuate "good", I think there is no problem with calling the God "good" at this stage already (It would turn out to create something "good").
That is a good point, too. Sure, the other lesser beings need not be human beings specifically, just lesser. (In my OP, I specify human beings for simplicity’s sake, since thus far, this is the only kind of advanced life we presently know about to which we can relate. There could be other forms elsewhere, but the nature of the lesser beings isn’t something I want to focus on because that is, I think, a later consideration----unless we want to get into the epistemological processes that any lesser beings might have to go through in order to figure out the nature of a god-entity and/or the presence of ‘the Good.’)
I do not necessarily disagree - but I am wondering how the "lesser" came here (not to mention that I would have problems accepting this as a valuating term before we have clarified what we mean by "good"). Hypothetically, two or more Gods (none of which is "lesser" than the other) could be "good" (to each other).
True, very true. But that is why I’m specifying that we are ‘abstracting’ and paring down our usually assumptions about a god-entity and the possible moral nature that is intrinsic (or extrinsic) to said entity, since we assume that it is [difficult?] for us to extricate any truth about a god-entity from its isolated, eternal state…before creation. Yes, I know, this almost seems like a contradiction in terms at a conceptual level, but….if Plato can posit the possibility of Forms, then I’m going to posit the possibility that we can abstract something about God and the Good that we probably have little to no way of confirming or really knowing.
Well, we can´t if we don´t even exist.
But the problem I am seeing is not so much that we don´t know. We can as well assume traits and properties for this God, and base our hypothetical contemplations on these assumptions. But we do need to have
some conceptual basis for our contemplations. (Of course, once we start making assumptions, we are already deep into theology, and I would certainly call you upon that.
. )
I would contend that we can learn something about ‘how’ we approach this whole topic and ‘how’ we structure our assumptions and/or preliminary thoughts, however effusive they may be, as we contemplate the God and the Good dilemma, or any derivative possibilities we may come across.
Yes, I agree. At this point, though, I can´t help feeling that we will learn that this is an approach which fails due to the absurdity of its conditions - but even that would teach us something important.
Well, I don’t know about that; does the ‘goodness’ have to match aspect for aspect and element for element for us to form some meaning that might emerge as we process our thoughts? (Perhaps. I’m not questioning you because I firmly disagree, but rather so as to keep the possibility open…)
No, I don´t think it has to match aspect for aspect and element for element (I mean, even amongst humans there isn´t a monolithic or unified concept of "goodness" that it could possibly match, in the first place).
But it would need some conceptual common ground, a common frame of reference and/or a common context. Here, I think, e.g. my above demand for a "good
for/to" would come in handy as a common conceptual basis.
Ok. I can understand that, but if we assume that a god-entity in eternity does not act, does this also mean that since his nature is completely immutable, that it surely follows that ‘His’ possibly good actions derive from an immutable nature?
I´m not sure I understand...if the premise is "logic dictates that X
can not act", there is no point in talking about "X´s possibly good actions.
Just for grins, I would propose briefly that a Trinitarian god-entity might have some kind of immutable nature on one side, but yet a possible way of being mutable for good manifestations through another side. But delving into obviously biblical motifs is not where I want to go with this conversation. I’d rather save that for some other separate thread.
Yes, please.
Don´t even get me started on the concept "trinity".
So, are we at a point that we want to say that a god-entity, isolated in eternity, and without yet making a creation (of some sort), is basically amoral by our standards?
Well, since you say "not yet" you are assuming that this entity can and will create (is the entity that has created what we see around us). In which case I think we can apply a value to this entity (depending on how we value Its creation) - even at stage where it hasn´t yet acted.
However, we haven´t yet conclusively discussed the question whether an immutable God can create at all (actually, we haven´t even yet defined God as immutable, for purposes of this discussion)...This is what I meant in my introduction: We don´t get anywhere without a minimal basis of theological assumptions.
Or do we want to say that the god-entity has a moral nature of ‘we know not which’?
It seems to me that when doing this, we implicitly say "we don´t know what the morality is, by which God must be evaluated". IOW, conceptually and epistemologically we cut off the branch on which we are sitting.
"Good" and "morality" could as well be called "umpf" and "ciprotality" - we admit that we talk about something of which we don´t know what it is, at all, but yet pretend our statements to be meaningful.
And how about this question: Should we let Plato have a free-pass with his conjecture about ‘Forms’?
Under no circumstances!
Thanks again.
