On Hell and Forgiveness

[The Grand Nudger]

Think about all the time and effort it must take to get so much stuff completely backwards? 

[SteveII]

A full theological understanding of omnipresent does not include the idea that God is physically present everywhere. I believe the correct understanding is he is cognizant of and causally active at every point in space. That is not the same as being in his presence--which is clearly a different thing in every mention of it throughout the Bible. 

In case you feel pasting the dictionary definition is an answer, I have given this answer before:

Before you go saying the definition is God is everywhere, that is not going to hold up. The universe is expanding. If God was everywhere, is God expanding? Or perhaps becoming diluted? Additionally, the universe if finite. Does that mean that God is finite. More silly conclusion can be drawn from a too-simplistic view: for example, is a portion of God in my coffee cup and the rest of him outside of it? No, God does not occupy space and is therefore not literally everywhere.

The term 'omnipresence' is unnecessary if what is meant is covered by 'omniscience'. As I said, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If 'omnipresence' does not mean 'God is present everywhere', then God is not omnipresent. It's okay, Steve, omnipresence isn't a necessary attribute of God. IMHO, the Bible verses used to derive 'omnipresence' are ambiguous and lack detail. You can just jettison the concept and get much more consistency with the Bible.

You didn't read carefully enough: I believe the correct understanding is he is cognizant of and causally active at every point in space. When you look at the meaning of that sentence, God is:

1. cognizant of every point in space
2. causally active at every point in space

This is not even close to meaning of omniscience.

[The Grand Nudger]

You conflate two things: God's actions and our moral reasoning/duties (for which you want us to judge God's actions). They are not the same thing.

That being said, God, conceived as the paradigm of Goodness, could never kill innocent babies for no reason. It would be an impossible conception of God and therefore describing a being who is not God.

-and yet...god does this, in magic book. Repeatedly. God tells his troops to do this, as well. More generally, god does this in the world by the very nature of his creation...daily.

Classical theism would tell you to toughen up and stop making god out to be such a babyloving pussy. God does what god wants with all the bay-bees..they're his property. He can make more if he wants, and he can cull as many from the herd as he sees fit, for any reason or for no reason.

Ironically, it's -your- judgement of that sort of god that has you re-imagining him..since, in your estimation, the god of your magic book isn't a god.

[Angrboda]

It's not an epistemological problem, Steve, as was already pointed out to you in that thread.  As well as the problem that this results in your God's values being arbitrary and thus not an example of moral perfection in an independent thread.  Regardless, we're back to God is good because you say so.  And I'm the most beautiful woman in the world because I say so.  Big deal.  You can assert shit without reason.  So can anybody.  For the claim that God is morally perfect to have any value, it would have to be coherent.  It isn't, so you're just muttering incomprehensible gibberish and hoping that nobody notices.

The Christian God is defined as the greatest possible being (scripture-informed Perfecting Being Theology). If you cobble together some lesser characteristics and say "your God could be this way", you are redefining the word. For this conversation and every one after, I do not grant the redefining of the term 'God'. There is nothing incoherent about the standard definition. You can easily glean attributes of God from the Bible and then systematize them into a doctrine using philosophy/logic. The concept has been discussed since Augustine. 

It doesn't help that the Christian God has been defined as the greatest possible being if greatness itself has no objective basis. That is not cobbling together lesser characteristics nor redefining the word. It's pointing out that the word has no objective meaning, and thus, from an objective standpoint, the concept is incoherent. I suspect you still fail to understand the actual problem. Your complaints here seem nothing more than throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. The fact that the concept has been discussed since Augustine is really not particularly relevant. Even Godel himself didn't seem to grasp the problem. Gleaning things from special revelation doesn't provide any more of an objective foundation, which is required if you are going to justify the conclusion from God's greatness. I suspect, too, that the bible also assumes an objective ordering of properties and so you would simply be trying to support one mistake with the same flawed argument. In the Blackwell Companion To Natural Theology, the question is briefly discussed, with no actual conclusions forthcoming. It is simply more or less assumed that objectively ordering properties might have some basis and then quickly moves on from there. There are problems with their discussion, but since that doesn't appear to be your issue, I'll deal with them if they are brought up.

[KevinM1]

Apophenia + cultural bias is one hell of a drug.

[The Grand Nudger]

It doesn't help that the Christian God has been defined as the greatest possible being if greatness itself has no objective basis.  

Even if we grant an objective basis, we'll still run into the same sorts of troubles poly is describing.  We can say that we're definitely talking about -something- specific when we use the term greater, but we're unlikely to find that the characters in magic books uniformly live up to that something even if we do.

The discussion steves trying to have is beginning to turn on internal coherence rather than basis or accuracy...which is amusing, since that's an issue of editorial skill, lol.  God is the greatest because godmen defined the greatest as so and so and their god as fitting those things.  This isn't entirely true, as a cursory glance of magic book makes perfectly clear.

Frankly, it would be more amazing if magic book was wholly, internally, incoherent.  Many continuity compromises were made to preserve favored dogma, in any case.  The grandaddies of all of them being the two borrowed ladders inherent to christianity - saddling itself with a canaanite wargod...and the assumption of pagan theological rationalizations.

[Silver]

It doesn't help that the Christian God has been defined as the greatest possible being if greatness itself has no objective basis.

God is only the greatest possible thing to people who are incapable of the logical perception that greater things exist in reality.

[robvalue]

At work.

There Stevell goes again.

Changing from definitly objective terms to subjective.

Also conveniently dropping the 'Maximaly' term.

Such as "Better to be 'Maximaly' good instead of 'Maximaly' bad."

Urgh....... teeth hurt, need bheer.......

Yeah... I've been on that merry-go-round too many times to bother getting involved anymore. If God wants me, I'm sure he knows where I am.

[polymath257]

Yep. Without a definite concept of 'greater', there is nothing else that can be concluded. For example, does your version of 'greater' actually have a 'greatest' element? Not all partial orders do. Some have maximal elements (none greater) that are not 'greatest' (all lesser). That depends on whether you have a linear order. But it is very far from clear that there is a well defined linear order that merges all the characteristics you seem to want to lump into a deity.

You want to claim the existence of a greatest. But a greatest need not exist for most partial orders. Even for linear orders there may not be a greatest.

So, you are just ducking the central issue: what does it mean to be greater in this context? How do you know there must be a greatest in that definition of greater? How do you know there isn't more than one 'maximal'? All of these are very relevant questions that need to be addressed *first*, before any claims of existence can be demonstrated.

What are you talking about? 

When talking about characteristics of a conscious being, there are definitely 'greater than' determinations that can be made. 

It is greater to be all-powerful or limited?
Is it greater to be eternal or finite?
Is it greater to be all knowing or limited in knowledge?
Is it greater to be Good or Evil?
Loving or hateful?
Creative or destructive?
Just or unjust?
Holy or unholy?
Immutable or fickle?
Keep promised or break them?
Merciful or unmerciful? 

In case it isn't clear to you, it is clear in the Bible that the former is greater than the latter in this list. Therefore a biblically-informed Perfect Being Theology is entirely coherent, rational, and not particularly hard to understand. The fact you can dream up a mathematical set that has no greatest member is sooooo irrelevant.

You have given several distinct notions of 'greater'. In no way have you shown that they are part of a consistently defined partial order. Nor have you shown that there is a greatest in any of them, let alone a single greatest for all of them.

[LadyForCamus]

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If God were to appear to everybody everywhere as unmistakably real, undoubtedly a few more people would believe in God and the redemption of Christ than do now.  Perhaps some who believe now would turn away, but it's more sensible to presume that more people who didn't previously turn to God then would do so than would turn away from him.  The consequence of those few turning toward God would result in eternal happiness for them.  The gains are thus infinite.  Moreover, Steve has repeatedly said that people who believe in God are more moral than those who don't.  So this is something that God could do which would be infinitely better for people as a whole, and which he chooses not to do.  So God is choosing a world that is infinitely worse than the one we could have.  How is a hidden God good again?

First, I don't think I have ever said those that those who believe in God are more moral than those who don't. 

Second, again, as evidenced by the billions and billions of people who believe in God, it would seem that he is not hidden. The atheist is really making the argument "he is hidden from me." 

Third, you claim that some sort of appearance would increase belief in God. That would increase the belief that God exists, but that is not what God wants. I think that the undercutting defeater to your argument would be that God is evident in the world and if someone wanted to find him, it is obvious they can. So, at best you express an opinion as to what God would do (which I mentioned is the place most atheist start--pasted below) and then that people would then take the further step to a personal relationship (the actual goal). 

For those that don't go back a dozen pages, here was my argument:

You are talking about the concept of what should we expect God to be like or to do. To answer that, we can't start with, "well, if I were God, I would...". We have to infer our list from revealed information, the concept of God, and the natural world.

1. From the concept of God, we get he is worthy of worship. This is a foundational concept. If a very powerful being exists and he is not worthy of worship, he is not God.

2. Is it not the case that God is hidden from everyone. There are countless testimonies of people's experience of God. There are no defeaters for these billions of experiences so the claim really is: God is hidden from me when atheist demand or surmise that God would show himself if he were real.

3. God provided substantial evidence of himself in the person of Jesus and the events of the early first century. This is exactly what you seem to be asking for. God himself lived among us for 33 years and did many miraculous things culminating in the death and resurrection--with has huge existential meaning in both salvation and the possibility of a personal relationship through the Holy Spirit.

4. God provides substantial evidence of himself in nature that is easily reflected on and has been for millennium. Why is there something rather than nothing?

5. God gives everyone a sense of himself: Sensus divinitatis

6. Every bit of evidence suggests that God's purposes are personal in nature. God desires a personal relationship with each person--NOT recognition that he exists. To treat the question does God exist as a science question to be analyzed is to miss the point. Experiencing God is not a proposition that can be examined outside each person. The end purpose of God is to bring your mind to a place where it desires a relationship with God. This necessarily takes time and a different path for each person. To say it another way, knowing God exists is not the goal. Satan, demons, angels, etc. know God exists.

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Christians want to have it both ways.  They want to suggest that the evidence is sufficient to compel belief in a rational person, but at the same time claim that by providing sufficiently compelling evidence, God isn't compelling people to believe.  You can't have it both ways.  Either belief is a result of unreason or ignorance, or God is violating our free will by coming to earth and performing miracles and resurrections.  Even Steve admits that reason alone isn't sufficient to bring a person to God.  If what brings a person to God isn't reason, then belief is by definition irrational.

I never said the evidence is sufficient to compel belief. Only that such belief is rational given the evidence. There is a huge component of Christianity that revolves around experience.

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A god who kills innocent babies for no reason is greater than one who does not.  I defy any Christian to prove me objectively wrong.

You conflate two things: God's actions and our moral reasoning/duties (for which you want us to judge God's actions). They are not the same thing.

That being said, God, conceived as the paradigm of Goodness, could never kill innocent babies for no reason. It would be an impossible conception of God and therefore describing a being who is not God.

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*bold mine*

I explicitly addressed these in my most recent response to you.