RE: I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!
August 14, 2009 at 12:07 pm
(This post was last modified: August 14, 2009 at 12:48 pm by Jon Paul.)
(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 desiresGod 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.
The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
-G. K. Chesterton
-G. K. Chesterton