RE: Christians, Prove Your God Is Good
February 26, 2015 at 10:10 pm
(This post was last modified: February 26, 2015 at 11:07 pm by watchamadoodle.)
@Ignorant, thanks for the further explanation of you definition (G(n), objective/subjective, etc.). That gets me closer to understanding your definition.
One thought: is there only one "goodness itself" that satisfies all the desires for each human? Connecting "goodness itself" to "God" (monotheistic) implies that one size fits all.
I wonder if a decision tree would be a clearer explanation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree ). Each node in the tree would have a probability function describing the expected goodness from that decision ("subjective goodness"). After making that decision, the probability becomes a certainty ("objective goodness"). And if the person reaches a node where he/she never wants to leave, then we call that "happiness"/"goodness itself"/"God". But this is making God a subjective human state of mind. (IMO it would be better to say "expected goodness" and "actual goodness" instead of "subjective goodness" and "objective goodness". Nobody can measure the "goodness" except the experiencer, so it is still subjective even after it is experienced. Another minor point is that the actual results of each decision create an entirely knew decision tree to strategize about.)
Of course a given human state of mind might correspond to many nodes in the decision tree (if it can be reached in many different ways). But why can't there be zero-to-many distinct human states of mind that are completely satisfying - even for a single human? IMO the human states that are completely satisfying are different for each person. I don't know how God fits into the definition. (We could define "completely satisfied" to be when you are experiencing goodness that is better than any goodness that you can imagine attaining by deciding to change your state. This stopping state might actually be inferior to previous states of goodness, but it is where you decide to give up before you make it worse.)
Probably I'm still misunderstanding.
One thought: is there only one "goodness itself" that satisfies all the desires for each human? Connecting "goodness itself" to "God" (monotheistic) implies that one size fits all.
I wonder if a decision tree would be a clearer explanation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree ). Each node in the tree would have a probability function describing the expected goodness from that decision ("subjective goodness"). After making that decision, the probability becomes a certainty ("objective goodness"). And if the person reaches a node where he/she never wants to leave, then we call that "happiness"/"goodness itself"/"God". But this is making God a subjective human state of mind. (IMO it would be better to say "expected goodness" and "actual goodness" instead of "subjective goodness" and "objective goodness". Nobody can measure the "goodness" except the experiencer, so it is still subjective even after it is experienced. Another minor point is that the actual results of each decision create an entirely knew decision tree to strategize about.)
Of course a given human state of mind might correspond to many nodes in the decision tree (if it can be reached in many different ways). But why can't there be zero-to-many distinct human states of mind that are completely satisfying - even for a single human? IMO the human states that are completely satisfying are different for each person. I don't know how God fits into the definition. (We could define "completely satisfied" to be when you are experiencing goodness that is better than any goodness that you can imagine attaining by deciding to change your state. This stopping state might actually be inferior to previous states of goodness, but it is where you decide to give up before you make it worse.)
Probably I'm still misunderstanding.
