(August 14, 2009 at 10:47 am)Eilonnwy Wrote: Evidence please. Not your own assertions.

I have already explained why in other posts. Go back and read; intellection is apprehension; abstract actualisation, also called things like "visualisation", "imagination", or simply understanding, which means the same as Greek episteme, to stand near or under something abstractly - in other words, actualising a thing as far as possible in your mind. God, being pure actuality, the purely actual principle of all potencies (as I have shown in many posts), is therefore pure intellect; purely actualising, in his very being, but in a much more perfect sense than humanity, because he is not "reifying", "re-actualising", as human intellects attempt to do to understand what already exists, but to the contrary, since he is the transcendent actuality - the creator (actualising principle) of all things- nothing "pre-exists"/transcends him, and so he is exactly informing things through his actualisation, rather than being informed by any other actuality (since there is none other than himself and those things which he himself informs existence to by actualising them). And so, his intellect is strictly active, informative, rather than being composed of both potential and active intellect as in the case of human intellects.

(August 14, 2009 at 10:47 am)Eilonnwy Wrote: Oh joy, psychobabble and you don't even know how to spell actualization.

I'm European. Excuse me if Americans corrupted the English language and then expect us to follow you.

(August 14, 2009 at 10:47 am)Eilonnwy Wrote: You do realize that your fancy language impresses no one, that we can understand what you're saying which eventually amounts to a whole lot of nothing. Circular reasoning at it's finest.

You have not demonstrated any circularity or fallacy in it. Perhaps you are just unwilling to admit that maybe just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it has no meaning.

(August 14, 2009 at 11:22 am)leo-rcc Wrote: Wow, argumentum ad firefoxum?

It's recognised in philosophical circles. I cannot deny this of her.

(August 14, 2009 at 10:56 am)LukeMC Wrote: On a lighter note, I'm also unimpressed with the fancy language.

Much of the language I derive from Aristotelian readings and hylomorphic theory. Sure, you might not like my language use; I don't care. The point is the meaning conveyed, not whether you like how it is conveyed. It takes reflection, not just reading it and thinking "psychobabble". Look up words, reflect on words relationship to each other, etc. Otherwise, it will remain psychobabble for an outsider.

(August 14, 2009 at 10:56 am)LukeMC Wrote: You just spent a whole bunch of garbling sentences explaing why we cannot use "desired" in an anthropomorphised way, and then went on to say "he wills" in an utterly synonomous way to "desires". You might as well have said "yeah he pretty much did it because he wanted to and it was somethign he wished to happen ie god wants things". Again, you'll have to show me how you could attain such knowledge.

Will, in this context, simply means completely actual and unrestrained autonomy, another expression for pure actuality. Because nothing (no potentiality) outside of God (pure actuality) exists except insofar as he has actualised it. Meaning that his will (unrestrained, actual autonomy) is equal to his action; he is pure actuality and completely simple. His action and his will are not separated, and his completion of his will and his action is not separated. This is just another part of divine simplicity. That he actualises things is equal to say that he wills that things exist, because nothing else could force the creator of all things that exist to create all things, because nothing else existed in such a manner to do so, unless he actualised (willed) them to exist to begin with. Understanding divine simplicity and transcendence is all that is needed to understand any of these inferences. To say that God wills something is the same as saying that God actualises something; there is no difference, and if there was, we would not be speaking about an unrestrained pure actuality whose action is it's will, but about something which has restraints and separation between it's actual autonomy and it's potential autonomy, between will and action, in other words, and thus does not transcend potentiality; but has potentiality in its own being, and could thus not be pure actuality/God.

(August 14, 2009 at 10:56 am)LukeMC Wrote: If he willed for us to be created then it was a desire he possessed.

You could say, after the fact that he has created us, that he desired that we exist; but only because we know that he actualised our existence. In that case, to say that he desired that we exist is the same as to say that we exist. Because will simply means, when predicated of God, his purely actual autonomy; because there is nothing that exists which God hasn't himself actualised, and so, nothing which is not itself a part of his actual autonomy, and so, nothing which could restrain the actualising ability of God, and nothing which could thus compromise the actuality of Gods autonomy, because anything which would do so would itself be a part of that actual autonomy. His autonomy, here, is autonomy, because he is independent, and is actual, because his independence as the actualising principle of any other thing means that there could be no restraint of his actualisation except the actualisation itself; and so, no possible restraint of his autonomy (activity) which isn't itself contingent upon his activity.

So he did not, at any point in time, "posesses a latent desire to create the universe", because he is outside of time. This is, yet again, a disregard of transcendence on your part; he is wholly outside of time and potentiality, and already purely actual and realised, and so there could be no separation between his will and his action, because his will is itself his action, insofar as it is his purely actual autonomy. The separation is artificial, not true of God, but true of humans.

There cannot be a passive desire which exists nonactively, which is "possessed", not "acted"; because he is purely actual, and so his will is also purely actual. His will is purely actual; he only actively wills, actualises; he doesn't passively/potentially will or desire, because that would imply restraint in his potence, that would imply that he wills something he cannot actually do, because whatever an entity wills is simply that which an entity actually does unless restrained or unable to do so. So if God can do something which God does not actually do, then it is strictly because it is in his will (active autonomy) that it isn't done; not because anything can restraint him. Gods will is Gods actual autonomy; Gods autonomy is Gods independence; Gods independence is Gods transcendence; Gods transcendence is his pure actuality, his being the actualising principle of all things that do exist, and thus his being that which all existing things outside of himself exist contingently upon.

(August 14, 2009 at 10:56 am)LukeMC Wrote: Regardless of any nonexistent boundaries, he still willed for it to be done and so it was.

But those are the same statements. The fact that he actualised the universe is the same fact as that he willed to actualise it. There is no separation, no composition, no potentiality in him, only pure actuality.

(August 14, 2009 at 10:56 am)LukeMC Wrote: This means that for some unknown reason he wanted this universe to be created in this precise way.

It's not an unknown reason. It belongs to good to disperse good, and since God is pure actuality (pure good), it belongs to his goodness that he wills (actualises) the goodness of other things (their actuality) that also disperse their goodness (actuality), such as biological organisms.

(August 14, 2009 at 10:56 am)LukeMC Wrote: From here, you must demonstrate how you can come to know that god possesses desires

God does not "possesss" desires; this is an anthropomorphic designation. God does "desires", if anything, he does not posesses them. God only wills insofar as God does, because he is pure actuality. Only impure actuality has potential and latent actualities that belong to it's yet unrealised potency, the realisation of which it receives ultimately from pure actuality, God.

(August 14, 2009 at 9:04 am)LukeMC Wrote: My bad. I meant pantheistic.

But pure actuality is not pantheistic, because the universe is not pure actuality, and hence, not God. If you ask why not, it demonstrates you have not understood what I mean with the words I say, which makes discussion pointless. But luckily, I have already answered it.

(August 13, 2009 at 3:32 pm)Jon Paul Wrote:

(August 13, 2009 at 3:22 pm)LukeMC Wrote: So your god is allowed to be uncreated but my universe isn't? Why isn't god an actualised potentiality? He just "is" yet my universe must be caused?

Look around you. You see that this universe is impure actuality, which means a composition of actuality and potentiality through actualised potentiality, because what exists now has unrealised potencies, which means the aptitude for change or for a new thing coming to be true of that thing. That which has unrealised potencies, is not pure actuality, because pure actuality is not purely actual unless it is completely (purely) actual, with nothing being unactual -unrealised/still potential- in it; if it is not purely actual -realised-, and has unrealised potencies, it is impure actuality (like our universe), and it has aptitude for change, and it will constantly change and evolve and unactual real potencies of that thing can (and will) become actual, and this constantly keeps happening while it exists. That is not pure actuality; that is impure actuality, that is, the actuality of a potency which is itself an actualised potency of another thing, and which itself carries other unactual potencies in itself that have yet to become actual.

(August 14, 2009 at 11:22 am)leo-rcc Wrote: Wow, argumentum ad firefoxum?

LMAO

Hooray for Firefox GB

(August 14, 2009 at 12:07 pm)Jon Paul Wrote: Much of the language I derive from Aristotelian readings and hylomorphic theory. Sure, you might not like my language use; I don't care. The point is the meaning conveyed, not whether you like how it is conveyed. It takes reflection, not just reading it and thinking "psychobabble". Look up words, reflect on words relationship to each other, etc. Otherwise, it will remain psychobabble for an outsider.

FYI I've spent quite a lot of time chasing up the words you use so that I understand the message. It's not that I don't understand or that I dismiss it, I just find it excessive and unnecessary.

Jon Paul Wrote:But those are the same statements. The fact that he actualised the universe is the same fact as that he willed to actualise it. There is no separation, no composition, no potentiality in him, only pure actuality.

I'm skipping the two large paragraphs as they're summed up in this one. I rejeect the notion that wanting and doing are the same thing for your god. Whether he sat and procrastinated for three thousands years or acted instantaneously due to his transcendence of time, he is still making things happen BECAUSE that is what he wishes to do. If you are going to go as far as to say his lack of thinking means his will IS his doing then you're basically saying "his doing is his doing" and confounding two words that have different implications. You're denying his will by saying it is his action.

Jon Paul Wrote:It's not an unknown reason. It belongs to good to disperse good, and since God is pure actuality (pure good), it belongs to his goodness that he wills (actualises) the goodness of other things (their actuality) that also disperse their goodness (actuality), such as biological organisms.

Demonstrate how God is good at all before you claim him to be pure good. I'd also like to know by what metric you're making this judgement of morality on a transcendent god? The same god of the old testament right? The one who willed.. i mean instaneously ordered people to slaughter each other? This good fellow?

(August 14, 2009 at 10:56 am)LukeMC Wrote: God does not "possesss" desires; this is an anthropomorphic designation. God does "desires", if anything, he does not posesses them. God only wills insofar as God does, because he is pure actuality. Only impure actuality has potential and latent actualities that belong to it's yet unrealised potency, the realisation of which it receives ultimately from pure actuality, God.

Whether they sit around for months or are instantaneously acted upon, God still wills for things to be done and for some reason he wished that we would be created and some of us would die gruesome deaths while others chatted on forums using funny words. God willed for this to be done, it was his choice.

Jon Paul Wrote:But pure actuality is not pantheistic, because the universe is not pure actuality, and hence, not God. If you ask why not, it demonstrates you have not understood what I mean with the words I say, which makes discussion pointless. But luckily, I have already answered it.

And I still think that this transcendent god you describe through your actuality/potentiality argument is at best a neutral, indifferent force of (super)nature without the bigoted prejudices of the judgemental christian misogynist.

(August 14, 2009 at 1:26 pm)LukeMC Wrote: I'm skipping the two large paragraphs as they're summed up in this one.

No, they are summed up in my definition of the divine intellect as: unrestrained purely actual autonomy. Will is autonomy; autonomy means self-determination (auto means self in this regard) towards an action, which is free by being unrestrained from other outside things or actions. Determination is also the same as directedness (the definition of intentionality) toward that actualisation. There is no greater freedom of will in any other than the Divine intellect, because the human intellect and followingly, will, is still informed by the potential intellect and is not self-informative and hence not autonomous in the divine sense of purely actual autonomy (which is will) in it's pure actuality which transcends every potentiality it actualises.

(August 14, 2009 at 1:26 pm)LukeMC Wrote: "his doing is his doing" and confounding two words that have different implications. You're denying his will by saying it is his action.

I am not denying it, I am saying it exists, but that it is equal to his actions. Read my definition of will already.

(August 14, 2009 at 1:26 pm)LukeMC Wrote: I'd also like to know by what metric you're making this judgement of morality on a transcendent god?

God is himself pure actuality; and is himself the highest measure of good and perfection. Therefore, using God as a measure of good and perfection, it is only a tautology to say that God is good and perfect, because goodness and perfection is equal to Gods being, namely pure actuality (divine simplicity).

(August 14, 2009 at 1:26 pm)LukeMC Wrote: And I still think that this transcendent god you describe through your actuality/potentiality argument is at best a neutral, indifferent force of (super)nature without the bigoted prejudices of the judgemental christian misogynist.

I have already refuted the idea that the Christian God is a "slaughtering God" (http://atheistforums.org/thread-1477-pos...l#pid26148). If you speculate to that length about the internal nature of the Christian God without applying atheism to him (which is meaningless, since then you don't grant his existence anyway), you forget that the Christian God can repay people for injustices in this life with an eternal life in the afterlife, and that any innocent blood shed due to his commands, he can repay with the blink of an eye by raising them from the dead and granting them many riches. You cannot actually say that the Christian God is unjust as an internal predicate, because a part of the Christian God is exactly his supernatural means of repaying justice, especially that he grants people eternal life, especially the poor and oppressed who suffer injustice in this one.

(August 14, 2009 at 1:45 pm)Jon Paul Wrote: No, they are summed up in my definition of the divine intellect as: unrestrained purely actual autonomy. Will is autonomy; autonomy means self-determination (auto means self in this regard) towards an action, which is free by being unrestrained from other outside things or actions. Determination is also the same as directedness (the definition of intentionality) toward that actualisation. There is no greater freedom of will in any other than the Divine intellect, because the human intellect and followingly, will, is still informed by the potential intellect and is not self-informative and hence not autonomous in the divine sense of purely actual autonomy (which is will) in it's pure actuality which transcends every potentiality it actualises.

I think I missed your point here. Does God have will again now?

Jon Paul Wrote:I am not denying it, I am saying it exists, but that it is equal to his actions. Read my definition of will already.

Your personal defintion? Lol.
You mean the definition in the previous paragraph? I failed to see you prove anything in that paragraph. You stated that God has the freest form of will...?

Jon Paul Wrote:God is himself pure actuality; and is himself the highest measure of good and perfection.

Substantiate.

Quote:[...] afterlife [...]

The rest of this paragraph is null to me, as I cannot begin to understand how an eternal life can be viewed as a good thing.

(August 13, 2009 at 11:38 pm)Jon Paul Wrote: A conceptual measurement of what? Of how things in the real world actually are, which patterns, laws, rules they behave according to?

Yes.

Quote:So if it is a measurement, then it is one of a reality.

It is in reality in our brains, down on paper, in computers etc, it exists physically as information. That's how it exists in reality.

Quote: Then it does exist as a conceptual reality, because it is in human minds simply a reflection of the rules, patterns and laws that apply in the world outside the human mind;

Yes.

Quote: yet, it is not itself matter, energy, space, or time,

I don't know how you come to that conclusion! As I said, it exists physically as information - in the brain, down on paper, in computers, etc, etc - how have you come to the conclusion that it's not physical? That it's not made of 'matter, energy, space or time'? From your previous statements - assuming you're making a conclusion - it's a non-sequiter.

Quote: and yet it is a reality that applies to matter, energy, space and time, the real world and we comprehend this reality only as a conceptual one, and so it can only rightly be called conceptual.

Yes. It's conceptual. And concepts are physical. You have failed to provide evidnece for the non-physcial.

Quote:You would have to point out in which sense God is complex; because this doctrine of a "complex" God is categorically rejected by the orthodox Christian understanding of God

I bet it is.

He's complex because he is capable of doing such incredible stuff, of transcending, he has amazing superhuman power - he's supernatural after all - he is superintelligent, and even without all this, simply the fact that he can create the universe and be there right from the outset without any explanation for him:This makes him more complex than the universe itself - it would be far less complex to just say the universe was there before God. 'The Universe + God' is more complex than just 'The Universe.' If the universe is to need an explanation then God is too, if the universe isn't, then we can just say the universe was always there and to add God into the equation is, once again, unnecessary; it's gratuitious.

Quote:And no, God is not "a mind at the beginning of the universe". You still haven't understood transcendence. God exists, wholly transcendent to the temporal dimension, and to any temporal designation.

You have failed to explain how that makes any difference to his complexity or improbability. He's still the same you're just defining him 'outside the universe'. It's a semantic argument because you've failed to explain the difference, to explain why this makes him any less improbable.

Quote:That God is of an intellectual nature does not make him complex.

Yes it does. Minds need an explanation.

Quote: Intellection really means apprehension; and apprehension is an abstract actualisation of an either abstract or material object, however incomplete we actualise our apprehensions as human intellects.

Where's your explanation for such a mind though? You're just saying That intellect isn't complex. Our own understanding has to have an explanation. So why doesn't God's need one too?

Quote:God, being pure actuality, is the apprehender and followingly actualiser of all things;

I don't care what he is if he doesn't actually exist. Where's your evidence for such a claim?

Your supposed 'explanations' for God are just more claims without evidence. How can you explain God by simply asserting him to be 'X' or 'Y'?

Quote:his act of intellection is thus identified with his real actualisation (divine simplicity).

That would only be the case if you'd explained there to be such a God first.

Quote:Now, Gods intellect is one which we call purely active intellect, because whatever he actively apprehends (abstractly actualises) the essence of, he does so in a manner which is itself defining for that essence; and thus, he does not need a potential intellect, like humans, to inform him with the intelligible forms achieved through sensory faculties and sensory knowledge of the already-actualised world, that he himself has actualised by apprehension.

It does no good to speak of God's intellect untill you've provided it with evidence. However complex or not it may be, if God is capable of doing the things you say he can do, if he's really that intelligent - then he and his mind must be very complex. You can't simply define it otherwise.

Quote: He is not a human mind; he is not intellectual in the same sense as a human is intellectual.

Where's your explanation for his intellect though? Where's your evidence? Where's your evidence for him at all? It does no good to speak of him and what he's like unless you're going to evidence those things.

I am a human. You are a human. We are incapable of knowing a "God" without having evidence of him. You can't just define him to be a certain way and then define his properties as an explanation. You have to provide evidence for this "God" and evidence for his properties.

Your 'explanations' are claims that lack just as much evidence as your claim of God existing.

Quote:The human intellect is a complex intellect, composed of two parts, the active and the potential intellect; just like we exist in a realm composed in complexity of potentiality and actuality. Whereas God is complete non-composite; completely simple - in a term, purely actuality, and God has only the purely active intellect, and is not informed by potential intellect as he is transcendent to time and is himself the apprehensive actualiser of all things.

So your explanation for God being simple is that...God is simple?

??

Quote:The human intellect has thus been developed in the universe in complexity and composition between potentiality and actuality, a teleological fact of generation (final causality/natural selection), which God has ordained, in creating humanity in his likeness

And where's your evidence that he exists, has done this and can do this?

Quote:They do, but all I meant was that it depended upon what you will, whether will is free or not was not my point.

Okay. Well you mentioned something being my 'free will', so I thought you were suggesting I had a free choice on my beliefs. So in that case I don't see what your point was. I know it depends on what I will but that's irrelevant because I can't choose what I do or don't believe.

For the record anyway - in case I haven't made it clear to you already -: I don't believe in free will. Unless we're talking about the compatiblist sense of free will that works even with determinism (not that I'm a determininist).

EvF

(August 14, 2009 at 11:41 am)Jon Paul Wrote: I have already explained why in other posts. Go back and read; intellection is apprehension; abstract actualisation, also called things like "visualisation", "imagination", or simply understanding, which means the same as Greek episteme, to stand near or under something abstractly - in other words, actualising a thing as far as possible in your mind. God, being pure actuality, the purely actual principle of all potencies (as I have shown in many posts), is therefore pure intellect; purely actualising, in his very being, but in a much more perfect sense than humanity, because he is not "reifying", "re-actualising", as human intellects attempt to do to understand what already exists, but to the contrary, since he is the transcendent actuality - the creator (actualising principle) of all things- nothing "pre-exists"/transcends him, and so he is exactly informing things through his actualisation, rather than being informed by any other actuality (since there is none other than himself and those things which he himself informs existence to by actualising them). And so, his intellect is strictly active, informative, rather than being composed of both potential and active intellect as in the case of human intellects.

So God is as pure as you can imagine him, because you said actualization is comparable to imagination. That's awesome that you can admit you imagine God. I have to agree, God is probably the purest intellect in your imagination.

You have done nothing to demonstrate anything you say is true.

---

(August 14, 2009 at 11:49 am)LukeMC Wrote:

(August 14, 2009 at 11:22 am)leo-rcc Wrote: Wow, argumentum ad firefoxum?

It's recognised in philosophical circles. I cannot deny this of her.

(August 14, 2009 at 2:38 pm)Eilonnwy Wrote: So God is as pure as you can imagine him, because you said actualization is comparable to imagination. That's awesome that you can admit you imagine God. I have to agree, God is probably the purest intellect in your imagination.

No, that's not what I said. But it's true that we cannot know that God exists without being intellectual agents; and that's also why we, as intellectual agents, have a higher teleological likeness to God and the possibility for an actual relationship to God.

(August 14, 2009 at 1:59 pm)LukeMC Wrote: I think I missed your point here. Does God have will again now?

He had all along. What you don't understand is just divine simplicity: that all of Gods attributes equals to the same fact of his being, of pure actuality.

(August 14, 2009 at 1:59 pm)LukeMC Wrote: Your personal defintion? Lol.

My personal one? No, it's not simply my personal one, but the one used in a large body of thinkers aside from me. You can dispute it, if you want, but that's a fight over words which I'm not going to engage in.

(August 14, 2009 at 1:59 pm)LukeMC Wrote: You mean the definition in the previous paragraph? I failed to see you prove anything in that paragraph. You stated that God has the freest form of will...?

You failed to see it, but that's not my problem. I have provided everything you need to know to substantiate it.

(August 14, 2009 at 1:59 pm)LukeMC Wrote: Substantiate.

I have already substantiated why God is pure actuality, and why pure actuality is the pure good and pure perfection, in all of the posts I've made about pure actuality.

(August 14, 2009 at 1:59 pm)LukeMC Wrote: The rest of this paragraph is null to me, as I cannot begin to understand how an eternal life can be viewed as a good thing.

Eternal does not mean an infinite amount of time, but a subsistent, nontemporal reality wholly apart from time.