(September 16, 2021 at 4:41 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:(September 16, 2021 at 4:02 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Then it isn't actually a rule, as you asserted, that we can only get what our creator has to give - and even you don't believe as much. Our proposed creator has perfection..but we don't, and our proposed creator has no flaws...but we do. In fact, you believe that we can get things our creator doesn't have.
As I pointed out, flawness is not a thing. It's a measurement of some character or ability or function.
You really can't keep your arguments straight, can you? You originally proposed that you can't give what you haven't got wrt good and evil, neither of which is a thing in the same sense that imperfection is not a thing here. So by arguing that the can't-give rule doesn't apply to things that are not in fact things in the ontological sense of existing, you've refuted your own rule as you originally applied it to good and evil, neither of which are things in that sense either.
I must say that I enjoy watching you time and time again tripping over your own balls in your attempt to push some quibble or another.
(September 16, 2021 at 4:41 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:(September 16, 2021 at 4:02 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: How does this fit with your belief that our claimed benevolence is evidence of a benevolent god? Give-get.
How does it fit into your belief that nature cannot be the agent of human benevolence? Has-hasn't.
Benevolence is our default state, how can anyone argue otherwise? Even without resorting to religion at all, it's clear that benevolence, empathy, some sense of justice, etc. are a necessary requirement for coexistence, otherwise we wouldn't be able to form societies even in their most rudimentary form, nor ensure the survival of our species to begin with.
Actually, our own history, the behavior of primitive tribes in the Amazon, and the behavior of the majority of our closest evolutionary relatives seems to indicate that our natural state is one of perpetual war and unmitigated and recurrent episodes of merciless killing. We have developed into a species that to this day has not found a way to leave that heritage behind.
A more plausible explanation for the development of benevolent behaviors lies in our existence as a social species which forms close knit families bonded by the hard genetic logic of kinship selection. We have not begun peaceful, but rather have slowly enlarged our definition of those we consider family by ceaseless iteration of our ability to generalize and group abstract things together. We are not benevolent by nature but rather by invention.