RE: I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!
August 14, 2009 at 1:45 pm
(This post was last modified: August 14, 2009 at 1:48 pm by Jon Paul.)
(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.
The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
-G. K. Chesterton
-G. K. Chesterton