(October 17, 2017 at 11:28 am)Khemikal Wrote: If, before you've created some thing x, you recognize that it will have it's own inherent goodness..it's existence is dependent on you...not it's goodness. If someone else created it, it would still be good. [1]
If no one created it, it would still be good. [2]
Conversely, if, before you've created some thing x, you recognize that it would not have it;s own inherent goodness, than your creative act would not make the thing good. Option 1. [3]
You gave existence to the thing, not goodness. [4]
If goodness is created, that's the second option, not the first..not both, and not a third. [5]
It may never become a thing, but that has no bearing on whether or not it is or would be a good thing. A non-profit that feeds people is a good thing regardless of whether or not I form, fund, and operate it. It's because it is a good thing that I decide to do all of that in the first place. My intellect recognizes the good...neither it, nor my will creates it. Option 1 [6]
You;re wheedling back and forth between the two options present, not presenting a third. I understand why, despite an affinity to affirm one over the other, you don't wish to accept the consequences - but oh well. [7] This is why it's a dilemma. It's not a dilemma at all for a person who's willing to accept those consequences of either position. If, for example, a person goes with option one, and accepts that there is some independent standard of goodness - no problem. A person who goes with option two, for their part, can accept the attendant arbitrary.
A person who believes, however, that there is no standard of goodness independent of their god, that their god is the author of morality cannot accept the first...and are often compelled to rail against the meaningful arbitrarity of the second. For reasons™ that hilariously swirl the drain of accepting some inherent goodness that they've already rejected. [8]
1) If someone else created it, both its existence and its goodness is dependent on that someone fulfilling the conditions for its existence. No existence => no goodness.
2) I am curious... "what", exactly, is being-good in regard to a non-existing thing?
3) Unless, of course, existing is itself inherently good. I think it is.
4) If you give existence to a thing, then you have fulfilled all of the conditions necessary for that thing to be-the-thing-it-is. Your giving-it-existence AS the thing-it-is is the very thing which gives the thing its goodness. I'm not sure how you are separating the concepts in any real way besides words.
5) If goodness is created arbitrarily, then it is the second option. If the goodness of created things participates in goodness itself (i.e. it is neither arbitrary nor subsistent) then its a third option.
6) A non-existent non-profit that feeds people is not a good thing, it is not-a-thing-at-all. Someone has to create it if its inherent goodness is ever going to-be. IF someone creates it, it will necessarily be good. Which is to say, on the condition that it is made to exist, it will unconditionally be good. If you are saying that the "form" of inherently good things are being-good somewhere somehow... where and how do you propose that is?
7) Affirming one over and against the other is the same as proposing an incomplete account as a full one. Both are partially true under different aspects, which means there MUST be a third option: participated goodness aka concurrent goodness - God creates things as having their own goodness by participation. Things are good because God creates them as participating in goodness itself (therefore, it isn't arbitrarily willed goodness, but rather goodness corresponding to goodness itself), and through participation in goodness itself, things have their own inherent goodness (therefore, it isn't radical independence of goodness, but rather, a true inherent goodness existentially dependent on it's essential source).
8)
