Godly Motivations

[John 6IX Breezy]

Omniscience doesn't mean all knowing, omnipotence doesn't mean all powerful.

What I describe has been the standard view since about the time of Aristotle. 

I've always viewed the terms omniscience, omnipotence, and such as philosophical rather than Biblical terms; they are caricatures in my opinion.

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God does stuff, and has done stuff.  We're told this constantly.

Why?  What could possibly motivate such a being to create or do anything?  God knows everything and can do everything.  God is complete and unchanging.  How could such a being possibly have any motivation whatsoever? 

Boru

Motivation is a very human experience; even within the greater sphere of biological organisms an animal can be driven towards a behavior without necessarily experiencing a motivation to do so, it is instinctual for lack of a better term. When we step on a tack we immediately withdraw our feet without experiencing a motive; the sensory information doesn't even reach the brain and the reflex is initiated. In other words, motivation isn't the only drive for behavior.

That said, even if we ascribe human-like motivations to God, the objections you've raised shouldn't have an effect since a lot of our motivations are internally generated. For example, we can't know and do everything, but we still find motivation to do the things we already know and already do. We hear the same songs over and over, watch a movie more than once, we form habits and seem to enjoy routine activities, we often feel more comfortable in the known than the unknown.

Something about your objection reminds me of Frank Jackson's knowledge argument; the general idea that there's a distinction between knowing something and experiencing it. God can know all things, and still be motivated to experience it. We're the same way, knowing something does not inhibit our desire to experience it again.

[John 6IX Breezy]

P.S. To clarify, by internally generated I meant we can be motivated to do something for no other reason that because we want to do it; there is no external reason or incentive for the behavior. Meaning that even if nothing in the universe motivates or incentivises God to do anything, He can still generate His own motives if He's anything like us.

[Anomalocaris]

P.S. To clarify, by internally generated I meant we can be motivated to do something for no other reason that because we want to do it; there is no external reason or incentive for the behavior. Meaning that even if nothing in the universe motivates or incentivises God to do anything, He can still generate His own motives if He's anything like us.

Bullshit.  There is not autonomous "we".   "We" can not be motivated to do something for no other reason than because we want to do it.   We "only" want to do it for "no other reason" because a whole series of deeper reasons  motivated us to do it, while another series of deeper reasons which may or may not overlap with the first series denied us the perceptual or cognitive recognition of these deeper reasons.

If you say God can do just because he wants, you are in effect saying your notional god is as both shallow and delusional as you are, and exhibit every indication of being ignorant of, or  complete fooled by, great many things more profound than it, and you are so stupid you would believe without question what such a delusional and ignorant god is said to have told you.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Bullshit.  There is not autonomous "we".   "We" can not be motivated to do something for no other reason than because we want to do it.   We "only" want to do it for "no other reason" because a whole series of deeper reasons  motivated us to do it, while another series of deeper reasons which may or may not overlap with the first series denied us the perceptual or cognitive recognition of these deeper reasons.

If you say God can do just because he wants, you are in effect saying your notional god is as both shallow and delusional as you are, and exhibit every indication of being ignorant of, or  complete fooled by, great many things more profound than it, and you are so stupid you would believe without question what such a delusional and ignorant god is said to have told you.

Whether or not we are autonomous plays no role in many actions being internally generated. Take for example the ingestive behavior of drinking; it is often motivated by the sensation of thirst. This sensation can arise when the brain detects a drop in the volume of blood plasma. The brain does its thing, and you (autonomous or not) go drink to correct the volume discrepancy. The entirety of this behavior is internally generated within the organism.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

P.S. To clarify, by internally generated I meant we can be motivated to do something for no other reason that because we want to do it; there is no external reason or incentive for the behavior. Meaning that even if nothing in the universe motivates or incentivises God to do anything, He can still generate His own motives if He's anything like us.

That doesn't really address anything.  Assuming that God could generate his own motivations, how could he?  God would have to be motivated to generate these motivations, but he would have to generate the motivation to cause himself to have the motivation to generate motivations and on and on.  And if, as it says in the handbooks, God is complete, how could he possible generate all these generational motivations to begin with?

Boru

[John 6IX Breezy]

That doesn't really address anything.  Assuming that God could generate his own motivations, how could he?  God would have to be motivated to generate these motivations, but he would have to generate the motivation to cause himself to have the motivation to generate motivations and on and on.  And if, as it says in the handbooks, God is complete, how could he possible generate all these generational motivations to begin with?

Boru

To be fair, I gave you two answers: that motivation to do things can be internally generated, and that experiences provide an external motivation to do things that does not infringe on knowledge.

But if we focus on internal motivations, isn't the single generation of a motivation enough? I don't see the logic of duplicating the process, such that motivation is needed to generate the motivation that generates the motivation, and so on. Isn't this redundancy what Occam's Razor is there to prevent? We merely experience the world, for example; we don't have a little man inside us experiencing what we experience, with smaller man inside doing the same, just one person is enough. There's a fallacy to this type of redundancy.

As far as being complete goes, I'm not too clear what complete means to you nor how it prevents the generation of motivation. Our brains generate thirst precisely because the mechanisms for it are complete. If an issue occurs and the brain is incomplete, disorders can arise that affect the generation of thirst.

[Simon Moon]

God is omniscient, he knew our thoughts and actions before he created us

God, they say, doesn't know things the way people know them. If I say "I know your phone number," that requires the existence of two separate things: me and your phone number. 

Since God is perfect unity and simplicity, there can't be two things. God is omniscient in the sense that all possible objects of knowledge are included in him already. 

 so in what way are we independent beings? 

Our existence isn't independent. We depend on God, who is existence itself. Without existence, nothing would exist. 

As for our choices and behavior, I am asking Brian37 why, if God made us without having to, this would make us of necessity NOT valuable, free, or non-toylike. I don't know what his argument is.

What motivated him to do this? 

God has no motivations. 

As always, I am only describing here the standard theological arguments.

This is the kind of claptrap spouted by theologians, that just demonstrates how truly useless their entire profession is.

They come up with all these lofty sounding concepts; "Since God is perfect unity and simplicity, there can't be two things. God is omniscient in the sense that all possible objects of knowledge are included in him already." Bla, bla f'ing bla.

There is zero, maybe even less than zero, reasons to accept any of that as being true. It is entirely baseless. And I find it hard to understand why anyone would respect someone, no matter how many letters they have after their names, for such useless concepts and attributes they are ascribing to their gods.

During my lunch break at work I was watching the travel channel. Of course one of the many 'ghost hunter' shows was on, and they were talking to a guy who has a psych degree, who was an alleged 'expert' on ghosts and spirits. He was saying things like, "ghosts tend to turn lights on and off, open and close doors, push things off shelves, etc, because that all they have enough energy to do". What is the difference between this ghost 'expert' spouting unsupported attributes to ghosts, and theologians spouting unsupported attributes about gods?

I can't even understand the reason for giving this stuff enough attention to actually 'study'. Theologians do not study gods, they study all the famous theists down through history who also had ridiculous things to say about gods.

Oh, and let me make a late addition:

The reason it seems to me, theologians have to come up with crap like this; "Since God is perfect unity and simplicity, there can't be two things. God is omniscient in the sense that all possible objects of knowledge are included in him already.", is because they have long ago figured out how the omni's are logically incompatible, so they can try to resuscitate the concept.

[mordant]

... knowing something does not inhibit our desire to experience it again.

Actually, it does. One can experience some things hundreds of times before all the novelty is gone, but it will eventually be gone, due to hedonic tone and simple familiarity.

If god is without limits then there's literally nothing new for him to experience. He encompasses all possible knowledge and experience.

This really gets at the incoherence of god concepts. A god is not anything but a very powerful denizen of the natural world if it is not ominipotent and omnipresent and so forth. Yet if he is those things he becomes a logical self-contradiction. He cannot be omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent and also experience love, desire, disappointment, jealousy, hatred, etc ... all of which are ascribed to the gods at some point or other.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Actually, it does. One can experience some things hundreds of times before all the novelty is gone, but it will eventually be gone, due to hedonic tone and simple familiarity.

If god is without limits then there's literally nothing new for him to experience. He encompasses all possible knowledge and experience.

This really gets at the incoherence of god concepts. A god is not anything but a very powerful denizen of the natural world if it is not ominipotent and omnipresent and so forth. Yet if he is those things he becomes a logical self-contradiction. He cannot be omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent and also experience love, desire, disappointment, jealousy, hatred, etc ... all of which are ascribed to the gods at some point or other.

For us humans, experiencing something hundreds of times in quick succession perhaps does drain the novelty. Luckily for us, the memory of the experience begins to fade not only in the absence of the direct experience but also in the attempt to recollect it. In other words, you might get tired of pizza after eating it for a month straight, but wait a couple weeks and you'll be back to wanting to experience the pizza again.

That may not apply to God if we assume His memory doesn't fade. In such a case I would simply argue that the memory of an experience is not a replacement for the experience itself; as such there will always be incentive to have the experience. The God without limits things seems like a caricature to me. I'm not even sure I understand what you mean by encompassing all experience, or how something like omnipotence inhibits the experience of love.

[mordant]

Actually, it does. One can experience some things hundreds of times before all the novelty is gone, but it will eventually be gone, due to hedonic tone and simple familiarity.

If god is without limits then there's literally nothing new for him to experience. He encompasses all possible knowledge and experience.

This really gets at the incoherence of god concepts. A god is not anything but a very powerful denizen of the natural world if it is not ominipotent and omnipresent and so forth. Yet if he is those things he becomes a logical self-contradiction. He cannot be omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent and also experience love, desire, disappointment, jealousy, hatred, etc ... all of which are ascribed to the gods at some point or other.

For us humans, experiencing something hundreds of times in quick succession perhaps does drain the novelty. Luckily for us, the memory of the experience begins to fade not only in the absence of the direct experience but also in the attempt to recollect it. In other words, you might get tired of pizza after eating it for a month straight, but wait a couple weeks and you'll be back to wanting to experience the pizza again.

That may not apply to God if we assume His memory doesn't fade. In such a case I would simply argue that the memory of an experience is not a replacement for the experience itself; as such there will always be incentive to have the experience. The God without limits things seems like a caricature to me. I'm not even sure I understand what you mean by encompassing all experience, or how something like omnipotence inhibits the experience of love.

I never said that "without limits" is either a coherent or real concept; it is simply the god concept that many theists have. Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenvolent, etc. Their god is fabulized enough so that it can't just be a glorified version of themselves. And yet ... of course, it still is. It is basically what they WISH they could be ... non-contingent, non-dependent, and not lacking for sufficient knowledge and confidence and potency.

So that is the concept I critique.

Whether forgetfulness and limited attention are enough to compensate indefinitely for familiarity, humanity has not had the opportunity to live that out and determine for sure. It's why, if I were offered some low to no cost, no side effect pill that would confer biological immortality on me, i'd take it. Because it's nice to have options. I am just dubious that I will want to have new experiences forever. But it is certain that the short, mean, nasty existence we live amidst nature, red in tooth and claw, is not enough to be sure. I'd like to find out as much as the next person. I'm just unconvinced it would have infinite value.