RE: Christians, Prove Your God Is Good
February 26, 2015 at 5:48 pm
(This post was last modified: February 26, 2015 at 5:49 pm by watchamadoodle.)
@The Reality Salesman, that is a good point. I have a gut feeling as I read @Ignorant's definition and conditional deductions that there are a lot of missing steps and undefined terms. The definition of good seems unnecessarily complicated by claiming that "goods" are for the sake of other "goods". I assume this derives from a desire to show that all natural processes drive toward "goodness itself" which we arbitrarily name "God". (Why not "pasticholony" instead of "God"?)
In the Catholic Encyclopedia article on "good", they define "evil" to be the absence of "good". I imagine this is a way to thwart any argument that this type of definition could be restated with "evil" replacing "good"? God cannot be "evilness itself", because "evilness" isn't anything?
@Ignorant, is your definition the same as Plato's definition and the definition in the Catholic Encyclopedia? I think your definition assumes a background in philosophy, and this is why it seems so nebulous to me. (I don't know how to criticize your definition, because I'm not sure exactly what you mean due to my lack of background knowledge.)
In the Catholic Encyclopedia article on "good", they define "evil" to be the absence of "good". I imagine this is a way to thwart any argument that this type of definition could be restated with "evil" replacing "good"? God cannot be "evilness itself", because "evilness" isn't anything?
@Ignorant, is your definition the same as Plato's definition and the definition in the Catholic Encyclopedia? I think your definition assumes a background in philosophy, and this is why it seems so nebulous to me. (I don't know how to criticize your definition, because I'm not sure exactly what you mean due to my lack of background knowledge.)