God's Value Nonexistent?

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

Sorry G-C, even by your standards this is self-referential, question-begging gibberish.

What makes you think he has standards?

[Cato]

Only an eternal being can have meaning, mortal humans can not unless they draw that meaning from God. The eternal God is the only One who has the power and presence to keep his meaning unchanging so all can have the same meaning to draw from and live by.

I have meaning. I do not draw my meaning from your god. This fact makes your statement ridiculous. I like to think that the fact that I'm not eternal gives my being more meaning than your bullshit god.

How exactly does an eternal being asign value to anything?

[Aroura]

Being original existence, whatever he is, he would be what he is. He eternal is, and this implies he is a necessary being, because whatever existence is, is what it had to be. Ultimate existence is what must be as opposed to non-existence or very small insignificant existence. Non-existence cannot be. Ultimate power is the default existence, it's the necessary existence. Ultimate Value is the default existence.

Why can't we derive value from ourselves? We can, but it needs to have a basis and origin with eternal ultimate objective reality. The reason is, is because all lesser existence, has been created from the ultimate existence and cannot exist on it's own or have no relationship with ultimate reality. That being the case of how things are, it also the case, it must be how things must be.

This is why when a lot of people doubt God, they automatically begin to doubt objective morality, objective value, objective praise, etc...Because God is the foundation of the perception. As they do have an eternal basis, it also turns out it is impossible for them to exist without an eternal basis as that is a property of their existence.

This is not an answer to the OP questions. It's a string of gibberish that vaguely resembles circular reasoning, without the reasoning.

Only an eternal being can have meaning, mortal humans can not unless they draw that meaning from God. The eternal God is the only One who has the power and presence to keep his meaning unchanging so all can have the same meaning to draw from and live by.

This also doesn't answer the Op's questions, it simply asserts that he does have meaning, which totally avoids the questions, which were:

Where does God get value? Neither of you answered this at all.

Where does he get meaning? If it gets it from himself, how? Same

How is it that he can get meaning from himself but we can't get meaning from ourselves? Again, unanswered.

I do see an attempt to answer, but in both cases it just boils down to a pointless statement that God has meaning because he is eternal. How? Why? What is it about eternalness that causes meaning? Since according to Christian doctrine, our souls are also eternal, does that make human souls have the same meanings as gods, since we have the same eternalness? Note that you said nothing about his goodness or omnipotence, both of you just focused on the eternal thing.

So, please do elaborate!

[Mystic]

How exactly does an eternal being asign value to anything?

I don't think God chooses to assign value to things, I think he rathers knows the value of everything to it's exact degree. He knows himself which is ultimate value and he knows all descended measurements of himself.

We don't have exact measurements of value. We have ball park understanding of value, and we assign like that. But we also believe there exists an exact measurement of value. This comes automatically with most humans. I argue we know there is an objective measurement which implies an objective measurer

We know a lot of things related to God. For example, we know (objective) praise is not arbitrary. We know for it to be that, it must have an eternal basis or rather in a sense be eternal.

All praise therefore at all levels must exist in a basis, a praiseworthy reality, that contains all praise (which includes all infinite levels of praise).

God cannot make up praise out of nothing. It's rather related to his own praiseworthy reality. However his praise is indeed transcendent and above our comprehension. We know some praiseworthy qualities it must have, but we don't comprehend fully any of them. We don't comprehend what ultimate benevolence is. We don't comprehend ultimate grace. We don't comprehend ultimate love. And we have no idea what ultimate power entails. This specially because they are all one reality, while we know them in separation and multiplicity.

We praise all sorts of different beauties and glories, and there exists all sorts of perception in animals ranging from their own distinct songs, to their mode of enjoying one another in mating, all this praise I believe unites in one essence. But every praise lacks perfection, while in God, it exists in ultimate perfection form.

He doesn't chose what praise is. If he did chose it, it would have no basis, and be arbitrary. It's rather an eternal perception.

And humans believe in this perception, and know they are not in tune with it perfectly. They rather have ball park fuzzy vision of praise with belief there is a perfect view that exists.

[The Grand Nudger]

"We' don't seem to know these things you keep claiming that "we" do. To be honest, I doubt that "you" know them...let alone "we".......

[Mystic]

So, please do elaborate!

My point was first in relationship to where God derives value from and then to why we need God for value (so that we aren't special pleading). My point was that ultimate value was the default existence and the necessary existence. Necessary in the sense it could not have not existed. If it's eternal, it makes sense it's necessary. And my point of why value must be derived, is simply that it having eternal basis is a necessary quality of it, because it how things are. It's like why angles of trianges must add up 180 degrees. You can prove it by all sorts of proofs, but at the end, it's because it's a necessary quality. It's impossible for it be otherwise. It happens to be the case, and it happens that it also must be the case, by the very nature of triangles.

The same is true here of praise and value. It happens to be that they are eternally based and must be eternal.

[downbeatplumb]

Small gods are a special classification of deity unique to the fictional Discworld. They are the gods of slightly significant places, say the point at which two ant trails cross. On the Disc, the power and presence of a god waxes and wanes according to the number of believers. A small god therefore is a god without enough believers to manifest in any significant form. There are two very different kinds: those who have yet to accumulate enough believers and those who were once powerful but have been forgotten. Of the former there is an almost infinite number on the Disc; Pratchett compares their hidden ubiquity to that of bacteria in our world. The other may still have memory of its former days, but its identity will be almost completely lost, even to itself.
A god may become small even if it has a large following. It is well established in the novel Small Gods that while many people call themselves Omnians, this has more to do with the participation in the religious institution rather actual direct belief. Therefore, while the following is large, the god Om himself is very small, both in size and power.

[Darkstar]

The same is true here of praise and value. It happens to be that they are eternally based and must be eternal.

Those are concepts, not actual 'things', per se. If no one were alive, there would be no praise, as there would be no one to do any praising. Likewise, if there was no one to imagine god, the concept of a diety would disappear, and there would be no diety.

[Cyberman]

Sorry G-C, even by your standards this is self-referential, question-begging gibberish.

What makes you think he has standards?

Oh, he has standards. Extremely low ones, but I'm fairly sure they're there.

[Mystic]

The same is true here of praise and value. It happens to be that they are eternally based and must be eternal.

Those are concepts, not actual 'things', per se. If no one were alive, there would be no praise, as there would be no one to do any praising. Likewise, if there was no one to imagine god, the concept of a diety would disappear, and there would be no diety.

From my perspective, they are concepts that relate to qualities and the highest form of praise is an entity (ultimate existence).

I do agree if there was no one alive, praise would not exist, but I do believe that the ultimate being is always alive and has always been alive.

While if all finite life ends, does all praise cease to exist? The good actions are no longer praise? As humans we generally believe in perpetual never ending praise. But this again only possible with eternal and forever existing life that perceives praise in accurate form.