On Hell and Forgiveness

[polymath257]

It doesn't help that the Christian God has been defined as the greatest possible being if greatness itself has no objective basis.  That is not cobbling together lesser characteristics nor redefining the word.  It's pointing out that the word has no objective meaning, and thus, from an objective standpoint, the concept is incoherent.  I suspect you still fail to understand the actual problem.  Your complaints here seem nothing more than throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.  The fact that the concept has been discussed since Augustine is really not particularly relevant.  Even Godel himself didn't seem to grasp the problem.  Gleaning things from special revelation doesn't provide any more of an objective foundation, which is required if you are going to justify the conclusion from God's greatness.  I suspect, too, that the bible also assumes an objective ordering of properties and so you would simply be trying to support one mistake with the same flawed argument.  In the Blackwell Companion To Natural Theology, the question is briefly discussed, with no actual conclusions forthcoming.  It is simply more or less assumed that objectively ordering properties might have some basis and then quickly moves on from there.  There are problems with their discussion, but since that doesn't appear to be your issue, I'll deal with them if they are brought up.

'Greater than' has an objective basis. It is a greater characteristic of a conscious being to be infinite than to be finite, to be omniscient that to have limited knowledge. That concept is all that is needed because a series of 'greater thans' can get you to greatest possible--given all the merging of the characteristics. Regarding the more difficult characteristics like Love, if a characteristic is not perfect, it has an imperfection and by definition it is not the greatest possible. We don't need to know what constitutes an imperfection--only that they exist.

And might justice have such imperfections? How about goodness? maybe being infinite is a type of imperfection iin a different way.

Once again, you are assuming all the different types of 'greater' actually agree with each other. But they are on distinct scales, judged differently, and often are at odds with each other, at least potentially (goodness and justice? knowledge and goodness?). It is *precisely* this merging that is problematic. There are many ways to do such merging for partial orders and they give different answers depending on the specific merging technique used.

So, no, 'greater' isn't an objective thing: it strongly depends on the quantity being measured and how it is measure Even in the case of goodness, it is far from clear that the different *types* of goodness can be reconciled in a consistent manner.

So, yes, indeed, we very much *do* need to know what constitutes a perfection, or an imperfection. We most definitely *do* need to know how the merging of different types of greatness is to be done. And we still need to have an argument why there has to be a 'greatest' in *any* of those characteristics, let alone for *all* of them at the same time.

Basic logic shows the weakness of your claims. Even very simple questions about how to go about making your ordering have been avoided. Until that issue is dealt with, there really isn't anything to argue.