/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22616944]

Let me get this straight....
>Aquinas lays the foundation for rational theology (inb4 greeks, yeah, whatever)
>Critics employ the problem of evil, concluding that God can't be both omnipotent AND omnibenevolent
>rational theology BTFO'd
>Pascal says so, indeed, but still endorses revealed theology instead of rational
>Hume then makes believers look even more retarded
>Mill then reconciles rational theology by saying "What if God wasn't ALL powerful"
>The most man can rationally justify, he argued, is the belief in a finite God.
>problem of evil BTFO'd by a finite Deity
>William James comes along and bolsters the hypothesis of Mill, pointing to a less than all-powerful God.

Has any philosopher made any bounds in the field of rational theology since James?
Has anyone ever tried and succeeded to the answer the problem of evil rationally without conceding the power of God?

[Anonymous No.22617073]

>>22616944
Hume never actually debunked Miracles, it is a myth. Read WIlliam Lane Craig's material on Hume specifically his debate with Gerd Lude,,an

[Anonymous No.22617259]

>>22617073
Why don't you give his argument instead gayboy

[Anonymous No.22617263]

>>22616944
God's omnipotence is not even in the bible, chariots of iron etc.

[Anonymous No.22617302]

Bitch just read Leibniz, why the hell are you wasting your time on Hume, Mill and James?

[Anonymous No.22617876]

>>22616944
>Has any philosopher made any bounds in the field of rational theology since James?
Yes, Alvin Plantinga. Read God, Freedom, and Evil.

[Anonymous No.22617958]

>>22616944
>problem of evil
free will.
evil is a result of human misuse of the free will given by God. by definition necessary for true good to exist, God gives us this agency, so it's our fault for disobeying.

this has been refuted way before all of these men you quote, and i doubt Aquinas hasn't also refuted it somewhere.

[Anonymous No.22617997]

>>22617073
i had to write an essay on this in my first year and was so fucking confused

[Anonymous No.22618005]

>>22616944
Rational theology is a misnomer, you cannot find God by rational means

[Anonymous No.22618006]

>>22616944
"i know our religion literally says that being good is impossible and that we should cut off our cocks to please the god of the jews, and that we've kind of fucking wrecked our homelands with this for centuries, but c'mon guys - maybe, just maybe we can not do this?"
Aquinas, in paraphrasis

[Anonymous No.22618023]

>>22616944
>Silent pause is what gives sweetness to the chant of the choir
Boom. Done. God is the silence and God is the sweet chant.

[Anonymous No.22618054]

>>22617958
C'mon man, don't be stupid. Does God have free-will? Yes. Then is God All-Good, All-Evil or Half-and-Half? All-Good. Was God ever in danger of being All-Evil or Half-and-Half? No. Then neither were we since we were created in the image of God.

And since all of creation is by God, for God, through God then the mere idea of evil shouldn't have been else that would mean that God had evil within Him already. So how comes the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Can there be knowledge of things which are not or only of things which are? Only of things which are of course. Therefore since evil exist, evil must be a creation. Therefore is by God, for God and through God.

[Anonymous No.22618064]

>>22618054
You non-Christians should screenshot this since I foresee the Christcucks nuking this thread because of what I've just laid down.

[Anonymous No.22618071]

>>22618054
this is the most horrendous twisting of logical thought i've ever seen.

we're not perfect like God is. we've never been since the fall.
we're free agents put between perfect good (God) and the absence of it (evil, error, death, corruption, destruction).

[Anonymous No.22618076]

>>22618054
>then the mere idea of evil shouldn't have been
it has to, for free will.
there is no need for actual evil, merely its possibility, so that there is choice.

our problem is we've actualized it by misusing free will.

you're treating this point in a panetheist view, as if we were exactly God.

[Anonymous No.22618081]

>>22618071
>we're not perfect like God is. we've never been since the fall.
>we've never been since the fall.
You can't make this shit up. If we were perfect then we wouldn't have sinned, so you contradict yourself unless you mean to suggest that perfect beings (e.g. God) can sin and do sin.
Here let's start the Socratic Method: Does evil exist?

[Anonymous No.22618084]

You don't need a dozen of philosophers to come that conclusion. Just read the whole bible(You seem like you're talking about the Judeo-christian father god). The Gnostics came to the same conclusion way before all these philosophers.

[Anonymous No.22618111]

>>22618081
only in theory. it needn't be actualized.

we were perfect, but given choice. we're not personified perfect good like God, we're created and told to choose to be like Him, and through that be perfected.
God gave us the choice of doing so or not.

again, you are taking a panentheist view, as if we were God.

you should read Plato, from whom you take the socratic method notion. helps clear this up.

[Anonymous No.22618149]

>>22618076
>it has to, for free will.
>there is no need for actual evil, merely its
>possibility, so that there is choice.
Does God have a choice? Does this choice mean that God sometimes thinks of doing evil, or of the evil He can do, or of the evil which is possible? Do these ideas of evil come to Him of their own volition or does He permit them to come to Him?
>>22618111
>only in theory. it needn't be actualized.
Theory is much different than fantasy. What do you mean by theory? Is there a color which is unlike all other visible colors? In fantasy perhaps, but in theory? I don't think so if by theory we mean of things which are possible because God has made them possible. Can any man make fantasies come true? No. Only those things which are by theory possible. And those are things which God has made possible. For I cannot square a circle though I conceive of it, but I can do evil though I choose not to. Who has deemed this so? Man? What can man deem? Nothing. Only God.

[Anonymous No.22618174]

>>22618064
Not even an own. He’s just trying to justify his personal nihilism. I’ll even buy the rope for him.

[Anonymous No.22618175]

>>22618149
no, God is perfect good.
>theory
stop trying to put other meanings against the obvious one.
it's a possibility that needn't be actualized. it is logically necessary for choices to exist so that free will to be truly free.
so God did not bring evil into existence, but we, being given free will, received the ability of, by our misuse of it, doing so.

[Anonymous No.22618181]

>>22618175
oop, forgot to change the rest of the sentence.
>so that free will is truly free

[Anonymous No.22618208]

>>22618175
>it's a possibility that needn't be actualized
Okay, so who made evil possible? And does this mean that this being made evil exist?
>it is logically necessary for choices to exist so that free will to be truly free.
So does God have free-will? Seeing as God is logically incapable of doing evil? Evil not even being a possibility for such a being. Or am I putting words in your mouth, and you believe that evil is a possibility even for an All-Good perfect being? If so, was this true even before He created us? If not, then was He good or not? If good, then why couldn't we be good without evil being a possibility such as God was?

[Anonymous No.22618241]

>>22618208
>Okay, so who made evil possible?
created beings, by disobeying.
>are they to blame?
yes.

>does God have free will
yes. let's define free will for a nice erasure of complaints
>“the capacity of a conscious mind to make decisions and choices without any external constraints or coercion.”

God is perfectly free in His will to do anything.
His perfection and holiness makes it impossible for Him to lie, to do or want evil, etc.
God’s volition is truly free—it is maximal in both quantity and quality.
God’s inability to lie or sin or be illogical (unliftable rock argument, trinagular circle, etc) does not diminish His freedom in any way, since it is the result of His own intrinsic nature; external influences have no hold on Him.

[Anonymous No.22618254]

>>22617958
Although free will is real, That it's only rhetoric to convince believers to follow Christian morality.

[Anonymous No.22618259]

>>22618254
>its*

how so?

[Anonymous No.22618495]

>>22616944
>atheists bring up moral question
>apologists and theologians have addressed the moral question thousands of times since the 2nd century
>atheists ignore answer and proceed to claim it hasn't been answered yet

Just watch these.

https://youtu.be/P0oI-eNvw74?si=AuSoA59OU_6DcF2z
https://youtu.be/zjBeR6f-NZ8?si=pIQz0T_7LFdGRb6q
https://youtu.be/HN53uHzOoXs?si=AYocWrGsH2fs_yxY
https://youtu.be/IxGUfnJo6Nk?si=st2L7fMV614jD7vO

[Anonymous No.22618526]

>>22617263
You people don't even question yourselves or check the Bible / Google before you make absurdly stupid false claims, do you?

The Bible has a lot to say about God's omnipotence.

Matthew 19:26, Genesis 18:14, Job 42: 1 - 2, Acts 26:8, Jeremiah 32:27, Daniel 4:35, and all of Job 38: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038&version=KJV

[Anonymous No.22618539]

>>22618054
>therefore, since we were created in the image of God, we can't be in danger of evil either cuz reasons

That's a non-sequitor. You have to prove that being created in the image of God means that. Here's a question for you: does being created in the image or likeness of something make you have all the intrinsic qualities of that thing, retard?

If I even have to tell you the answer you're NGMI.

[Anonymous No.22618686]

OP here. no one has really touched on what it I'm getting at: Has rational theology ever been reconciled since Mill and James?

>If God is all-good, he can't be all-powerful because he isn't able to stop evil events through divine intervention
>If God is all-powerful, he can't be all-good be good because then he isn't willing to stop evil events

Mill and James thought that God had to be finite ie. not all-powerful, I saw some anons say that maybe it's the opposite, that God is all-powerful, but not necessarily all-good, maybe that is an answer, but has anyone attempted to combine the two rationally?

The only way I can think to rationalize this is that God's nature is just too complex for man to understand.

>>22617876
I don't think the argument from free will applies here. It explains how evil can exist, but not why God permits it to keep happening.
>>22617073
I should have left Hume out of this, but even if he never existed, the problem above would persist -- If miracles exist, they would point to God being all-powerful, but not all-good in this context.
>>22617302
>>22617876
>Leibniz
>Alvin Plantinga
Thanks, I'll check them out.

[Anonymous No.22618709]

>>22616944
>From rationalism, religion was bound to sink into sentimentalism, and it is in the Anglo-Saxon countries that the most striking examples of this are to be found. What remains is therefore no longer even a dwindling and deformed religion, but simply ‘religiosity’, that is to say vague and sentimental aspirations unjustified by any real knowledge: to this final stage correspond theories such as that of the ‘religious experience’ of William James, which goes to the point of finding in the ‘subconscious’ man’s means of entering into communication with the divine. At this stage the final products of religious and of philosophical decline mingle together and ‘religious experience’ becomes merged in pragmatism, in the name of which a limited God is stipulated as being more ‘advantageous’ than an infinite God, insofar as one can feel for him sentiments comparable to those one would feel for a higher man. At the same time, the appeal to the ‘subconscious’ joins hands with modern spiritualism and all those ‘pseudo-reli-gions’ characteristic of our age. In another direction, Protestant moralism, having gradually eliminated all doctrinal basis, has ended

[Anonymous No.22618719]

>>22618686
I think this argument is flawed because it makes the assumption that stopping an evil act is inherently good.

[Anonymous No.22618721]

>>22618539
No it doesn't imply you acquire all the intrinsic qualities of that something, but it does imply that the created being must only have those potential or actual qualities which the creator allowed to be. In this case God made us and He made us good, didn't He? Because why wouldn't He? If something is Good then there is no evil in them. Whence comes evil then? Man is not a creator, is he? No, not at all. It comes from God.
Get fucked, retard.

[Anonymous No.22618758]

>>22618709
Is that Guenon? from what?

[Anonymous No.22618759]

Unironically Hegel. God’s very perfection itself is a defect. He cannot get rid of evil without simultaneously destroying free will which would destroy his entire original purpose for creating the world. In order to escape the necessity of contradiction He creates the world such that He can be known as He is in Truth. God’s very nature itself necessitates an observer to glorify Him of its own volition because without one He would not have existence as God (for-itself) but as the mute stuff of being (in-itself). In a way prayer and remembrance of Him causes Him to exist in his fullness. We are the mirror of God. In us He sees his own image.

[Anonymous No.22618789]

>>22618759
>In a way prayer and remembrance of Him causes Him to exist in his fullness
Isn't that a type of phenomenalism?
Isn't that a little bit gnostic?
>by praying I'm helping God know himself
Isn't that a bit self righteous to believe that one can 'help' God in any way?
Is this wear Guenon and Hegel come to disagree?

[Anonymous No.22618842]

>>22618789
Not any more self righteous or vain than the hammer that takes pride in driving nails. And yes, it is adjacent to gnostic reasoning but where they differ is Hegel absolutely maintins God’s essential goodness. For the gnostics God makes the world so he can torture people for fun. For Hegel God makes the world in an effort to recognize himself better. The gnostics take suffering as an end and Hegel sees it as a means. I have not read Guenon so I cannot comment on their differences.

[Anonymous No.22618922]

>>22618842
>Hegel absolutely maintins God’s essential goodness
that's good to know, I am excited to read both of them, but I am still a /lit/ noob getting familiar with the basics.
>>22618709
it seems like he is saying revealed theology will always superior to rational theology, which is the same thing Pascal said. I have a feeling the dispute between Hegel and Guenon is pretty relevant in current year, but I can't be sure because I have a lot of reading to do.

[Anonymous No.22619110]

>>22616944
I don't really get why Theologians have to try and argue that God is omnipotent. Can God make a square circle? No because by definition the one is not the other, if God creates a square circle then he has created a paradox. Similarly the creation of a world without evil and free will leads to a similar paradox, but without free will there is no point in creating this world. If you exclude the ability to create unparadoxical paradoxes from omnipotence God can still be omnipotent and exists along with evil.

[Anonymous No.22619266]

>>22619110
A good analogy for the universe is John Conways game of life. When you load the game of life program onto your computer you are effectively the God of the universe it creates. You have complete control over this universe, you can pause it's execution, you can insert new entities, or you could just let it run according to the laws you have provided it. However, what you cannot do is insert paradoxical entities into your universe, any attempt to do so would just crash your universe. Suppose also you wanted a universe that performed a specific function, like you should be able to simulate bacterial growth in your universe. You would then need to design your universe for that purpose. Again you cannot break logic, but does that mean you are not omnipotent from the perspective of objects in the universe?

[Anonymous No.22619498]

>>22617876
thanks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeX6Lhb0_6A

[Anonymous No.22619561]

>>22618719
+1
>>22617958
problem of evil -> free will -> problem of future contingents -> incompatibilism

[Anonymous No.22619591]

>>22618759
Eight sentences that are all nonsense

[Anonymous No.22619643]

>>22616944
This relies on the idea that "evil" and "benevolence" are what humans think it is
God may well see all the death and destruction in human history as perfectly fine.

[Anonymous No.22619849]

>>22619110
Omnipotence does not include contradictions. It is the ability to do what is possible. A square circle is impossible just like free will without evil, so God is still omnipotent.

[Anonymous No.22619856]

>>22619849
So does evil precede God or does it coincide with God's being? Seeing as God has free-will? Therefore God is the reason for evil existing and not us.

[Anonymous No.22619911]

>>22617997
How am I meant to compete with this? In my first year I was still breastfeeding and drooling on things.

[Anonymous No.22619934]

>be uneducated shoe cobbler
>receive VALIS data transmission from a light ray reflected off a bowl of water
>proceed to eternally mog all theologians and philosophers
Hegel was ok too, but he really was just relaying Boehme in more philosophical presentation.

[Anonymous No.22620005]

>>22619934
>but he really was just relaying Boehme in more philosophical presentation
Never read Boehme but can you elaborate?

[Anonymous No.22620014]

>>22616944
whitehead poster where u at

[Anonymous No.22620039]

>>22616944

Minecraft has monsters in it. Is Notch therefore evil?

[Anonymous No.22621284]

>>22617302
Leibniz is basically a Spinozist anyway

[Anonymous No.22621287]

>>22618054
>God have free-will?
no

[Anonymous No.22621312]

>>22618054
"God has free-will" isn't even false. You are delusional.

[Anonymous No.22621439]

>>22618709
Quotes like this make it hard to like him

[Anonymous No.22621474]

>>22616944
Plantinga does a lot of work on this front. Even people who don't like Plantinga (myself sort of included) agree he his a brilliant logic chopper, and gets around some of the "big contradictions."

Personally, I think the God of classical theism simply is not the God of Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Eckhart, etc. They have an idea of God as an all powerful God that stands besides the world. This God cannot be truly infinite because in the set of things that exist there is God and the world, distinct and next to one another.

Such a God is necessarily unfree in some ways and defined by "what God is not." And you see this in theology too, because many theologians, particularly since the Reformation, embrace a God who is less than fully transcendent and tie themselves into knots explaining how he can have full sovereignty but not will the evil that occurs.

Pic related does a pretty good idea explaining these problems, although it misses some of the deeper mystery and narratives of direct experience so well illuminated in folks like Saint Bonneventure, Eckhart, etc.

Natural theology has made some good advances with the advent of information theoretic conceptions of being and the rise of a process based, as opposed to substance based metaphysics. This clears up many difficulties that arise in the "discrete objects and substances as essential," model.

All is a unified process. Edges are hard to define. Self-determination requires that there is nothing outside one. As Augustine says of God, God is in everything but contained in nothing.

[Anonymous No.22621500]

>>22618054
Evil is not a substance but an absence. Not an existence in the whole, but the result of separation.

But in important ways there is no separation (Shankara, Eckhart).

Augustine lays this out most clearly in "Against the Manicheans."

Boehme lays out the presence of divine darkness, the "Anger Well," but this is difficult. Jung sort of gets at this two but it's more a loose grappling than a theology. It's partly explained in Hegel, particularly the logic, but in a very abstract way.

Evil is separation of God. This can and is transcended. There is a way in which the Gnostics had some good insights here, although they err severely in other ways. The whole point is freely overcoming this separation, through increasingly free action. Freedom is to go beyond oneself, to become less and less effect, and more and more self determining cause. Thus, science is a key part of the endeavor. In science we go beyond ourselves and our initial beliefs. We question all and reach beyond towards the Gnosis. The same is true in philosophy. But that's only half the story. In meditation and prayer we reach beyond ourselves experientially and emotionally, in a love that unites us progressively with what we are not, eventually with all things. When there is nothing outside one, nothing outside the self determines the self.

And this is a historical and social process. Not, "God's will gets done," but "all wills become Gods."

Thus, polysemy and disagreement on theology makes sense. It is the dialectical progression of the Absolute Idea.

The Church is the immanent Body of Christ given form by man in the same way Mary helped to craft the physical being of Christ. We are called to be a collective Mary in this mode of the Church, midwives to the Absolute.

Unfortunately, Hegel is not always clear and much of his insights have been missed on this front.

[Anonymous No.22621513]

>>22619110

Freedom requires that evil be possible. Good is contentless without the possibility of evil. And these are in some ways relative. Augustine, for example, allows that those punished justly by God see the punishment as evil.

But if you look at universal evolution, it seems like God is building up freedom from its barest essentials. See this new paper: https://www.reuters.com/science/scientists-propose-sweeping-new-law-nature-expanding-evolution-2023-10-16/

And this means the freedom that emerges must come to freely choose God. This is the blessing we receive. We become free to freely embrace God, to transcend our limited being.

God aids us in this. The best description of this is Saint John's Dark Night of the Soul, which discusses how the passions and sensuous nature are mortified. A great work of practice.

We strive for the good for the reasons Plato identifies in the Republic. No one wants simply what they think is good. They want the real good. If we were to discover that some sort of pleasurable state was actually not good, we would want the good instead. No one says "I would wish to be deceived and have the fake good and not the higher one."

This is where scientific morality, e.g. Harris fail. They make good points, and I agree that well being can be objectified and operationalized in many ways, but they are wrong to think that this means that the intellect is, as Hume puts it best a "slave of the passions." Even Harris would allow that if his theory was wrong and there was a higher good and truth, we should seek that instead.

Plato is on to something very deep here.

Further, to do good we must know what consequences our actions will have and how to do things. We cannot cure cancer without knowledge for example. Nor can we do good if we are not free to do so.

So the promotion of human knowledge and freedom becomes duties regardless of what we eventually find the good to be. And in these we transcend ourselves, reaching outwards.

[Anonymous No.22621591]

>>22618686
>>22621474
I agree with this anon. Especially regarding the remarks concerning Paul, Augustine and Eckhardt.
Never got, why Christianity necessitates an omni-potent instead of a maximally-potent god entity. These doctrines produce a nonsensical god, that has self contradictory attributes and is ultimately unthinkable for the honest believer.
Revealed theology will also ultimately force it's adherents to subscribe to paradoxical statements about god, yet insisting that these contradictions are a testiment to god's greatness. Meaning that said paradoxical god would be so great so that we could categorically not grasp him. God's greatness however then must lie in his non-sense.
Modern process theology in A.N. Whiteheads Tradition of metaphysics could be interesting for you too (e.g. Cobb, or even Catherine Keller if you don't mind it being extensively theologically liberal).

[Anonymous No.22621685]

>>22621500
>Evil is not a substance but an absence. Not an existence in the whole, but the result of separation.
If God is in everything then how could there be an abscence of God? And how could He know what sins you've done if He is absent from it? How would He justly punish you for it? What aspect of God has to do with harm seeing as punishment requires harming? Or is punishment not the right word here? Also, does justice repay evil with evil or evil with good? Do the evil get the good for the evil they've done to the good?
>Freedom requires that evil be possible. Good is contentless without the possibility of evil.
If evil didn't exist before our creation then was God's good contentless then? Would that mean that He wasn't always All-Good?

[Anonymous No.22621857]

>>22621685
If time starts with creation than talking about a time before time is sort of meaningless. To be sure, there is a "first state," a state at which things exist that existed in no prior state, but there isn't a time before time.

I think Merton and others are right to think of it in terms of the darkness of God in which there is no differentiation is continually giving birth to/speaking the world into existence. Hence, the content is not there in the whole of potentiality but is there in the whole of actuality. It's like a sound wave of infinite amplitude and infinite frequency. It covers the range of all possible messages but the peaks and troughs become infinitely close together, canceling each other out, resulting in a pregnant silence. The creative act is this symmetry breaking.

Augustine's theory of evil as absence doesn't fall into these problems but it isn't easy to explain succinctly. Suffice to say, it makes more sense in the cosmology he inherits from Plotinus, Porphery, and Proclus. Because here, the lower hypostases have no causal effect on the higher hypostases which are "more real" because they are more necessary and more self-determining. It isn't quite Shankara's idea of Maya, illusion, but it's gets close in some respects. Augustine's point is that evil isn't its own essence, but a corruption of essence, and essences are more real. Thus the higher is without evil, evil emerges from the corruption of the lower, a consequence of freedom to sin that has been enacted.

That said, I find little biblical or logical support for the doctrine of Original Sin, which ties in here. The Orthodox seem to get this more right with "Ancestral Sin." Sin is separation from God, the failure to recognize the transcendent whole in which all is good.

This is less convincing today but a similar argument can be made from process philosophy. The whole is not evil and the part can only be understood in terms of the whole (e.g. fundemental particles that are only definable in terms of fields).

>>22621591
>>22621474
Sorry, I wrote that in a very ambiguous way. I mean the God of classical theists, your enlightenment thinkers, the ones proposing a "omniscient, omnipotent, etc." God are the ones with an idea of God that is not fully transcendent. They see God as one thing, creation as another. God has some properties, the world has others.

Saint Paul, who talks about being in God, God being in US, living in Christ and Christ who lives in US, and Saint John, both have something fully transcendent in mind that the logic chopping of Plantinga et al. simply misses.

The spirituality of folks like Bonneventure, Hildegard, Rumi, or John of the Cross goes beyond these distinctions without necessarily embracing dialetheistic or paraconsistent logic.

[Anonymous No.22621881]

>>22618721
This is so mind blowing my stupid I have to conclude you’re either 14 or autistic.

Only God can be perfect, by definition we cannot be without being God. Even angels can rebel, which is what demons are. We were not created morally good, we were created with self-determining free will including the capacity for sin, but God does not make us sin. We were sinless for a brief period of time until Eve, convinced by Satan, convinced Adam to sin with her. It’s not a hard concept to grasp.

My 7-year-old understands the Fall and Original Sin better than you do. gEt fUcKEd rETaRD.

[Anonymous No.22621882]

>>22621857
Jesus expresses the transcendent mode as well, in Luke he says "the kingdom of God is within."

Freedom is a key element here. We are unfree when we are simply acted upon by our desires. Paul talks about being at "war with the members of his body." He is dead in sin.

Reason, Logos, is essential to overcoming this death. So too is Spirit, the emotional side of transcendence. Take Hegel's definition of love. When we love, we identify with the other. We find ourselves in the other.

Hegel speaks very abstractly, but he is in line with the mystics when he speaks of the goal of the self "coming to be at home with itself in the other."

Love is coidentical, a going beyond the simple limits. In the same way, the search for knowledge is a continual process of going beyond what we currently know, not being limited by that. This is the quest to "attain the gnosis."

And against the modern claim, so well summed up in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and in Hume, that the intellect is merely another desire, and self control just one desire triumphing over others, we have Plato's argument in the Republic laid out here, >>22621513, that we don't want the appearance of the Good but the Good itself.

And Nietzsche has to agree with Plato here or his whole revaluation of all values collapses into mere animal hedonism. That is, Nietzsche seems to have gotten what Plato was saying, but not fully applied it in all directions. Nor does he see how Hegel shows there is a social element to freedom.

The begining of Hegel's Philosophy of Right also has a pretty good section on how freedom cannot merely be the proper ordering of desires.

It's not that Epicurean philosophers or the Nichomachean ethics are wrong in their practical approaches to these issues, it's just that they are incomplete. The same is true for modern practically minded thinkers, Harris, Skinner, etc. It's a partial truth worth listening too, but still partial.

I see Hegel and Plato as reaching far higher here, but offering less practical advice. The sad thing is that the medievals do a great job of following the Hegel/Plato transcendence, and adding practical advice, but no one reads them anymore because it has become dogma that they were all just deluded by faith and only write about religion not philosophy. It'd be like writing off all Hindu thinkers because you see the word Brahma mentioned.

And this aversion to Christianity has a lot to do with misconceptions about the non-trancedent version of the Christian God made concrete in the Englightenment and Calvinism.

[Anonymous No.22621929]

>>22621882
>The sad thing is that the medievals do a great job of following the Hegel/Plato transcendence, and adding practical advice, but no one reads them anymore because it has become dogma that they were all just deluded by faith and only write about religion not philosophy.
Can you recommend any works of some of these medievals?

[Anonymous No.22621958]

evil is not a problem. entertainment is

[Anonymous No.22622819]

>>22621857
Would you say Panentheistic Christians are the most logically consistent?

[Anonymous No.22623000]

>>22622819
Panentheism isn't even a sentence. It's not even false.
>>22621929
I agree with anon's take here, but I don't think you should seek out individual named authors like we would among the ancients or moderns—after all, they were technically dipping into the Dark Ages. I'd say the medievals excelled in logic (I know this is a very unpopular statement) and that the history of logic will tell you which works are worth reading in order to extract the progress from that millennium. Hegel wrote some very interesting commentaries on the medieval in his history of philosophy.
>>22621882
You sound like Logo. I like it.

[Anonymous No.22623008]

>>22621881
If we were not created morally good, and being morally good is a requirement for being perfect as I understand you to imply then God must be morally good and perfect, right? Then why doesn't God dissuade one from every potential evil one might commit? I mean if even I, being not morally good inherently but rather self-determining, am able to dissuade or at least try to dissuade someone from doing an evil act, why can't God as well? Not only because He is morally perfect but also because He is potently perfect. This doesn't negate anyone's free-will, so why doesn't He do it?

[Anonymous No.22623021]

>>22623000
>Panentheism isn't even a sentence.
what did you mean by this, what I said was a sentence
> It's not even false.
Yeah, that's what I am saying, but most people probably think Panentheism and Christianity are mutually exclusive

[Anonymous No.22623314]

>>22616944
The “problem or Evil” is the dumbest argument of all time and only reveals the infantile mind of whoever uses it.

[Anonymous No.22623348]

>>22623008
He does. God blesses those who follow Him, and sends troubles to make one who doesn't turn from his ways.
He can't be forcing about it, because that'd be against free will.

[Anonymous No.22623532]

>>22623021
Panentheism doesn't correspond to any logically admissible statement. It's a nonsensical rebuttal to pantheism.

[Anonymous No.22623536]

>>22623314
What exactly makes a valid argument "dumb?"

[Anonymous No.22624009]

>>22623536
because it's not valid.
it's built on a false premise of determinism, by which the question is loaded with the implication that God determined everything that happens; such is untrue because man has free will, which God gave to him and respects any choices he makes.

[Anonymous No.22624274]

>>22623348
I don't even know anymore nor can I be bothered to argue any further.

[Anonymous No.22624430]

>>22623532
>Panentheism doesn't correspond to any logically admissible statement
How when it encapsulates the transcendental nature of God found in the New testament. What other forms of theism can say the same?

[Anonymous No.22624476]

>>22618686
Is it not possible that this world is the upper limit of some constraint? The "nicest world" that can be possible in any configuration of worlds that allow for the free will of individuals? And therefore God is making the stance that the introduction of evil is secondary to the creation/existence of life?

[Anonymous No.22624487]

>>22624476
The "nicest world" that can be possible in any configuration of worlds that allow for the free will of individuals?
So God is outside of or apart from the world?
>And therefore God is making the stance that the introduction of evil is secondary to the creation/existence of life?
Yes that is possible.

[Anonymous No.22624489]

>>22624476
>>22624487
what you said is possible and the latter part is consistent with Panentheism as well--and I could ask you, is it not possible that the world is contained within the mind of God as opposed to being a world outside of God?

[Anonymous No.22624517]

>>22617958
This argument has always been retarded.

>"Yeah my omnipotent, omniscient god allows evil to exist because he wants to test us by giving us the ability to do evil and then he watches us to see if we use it... even though he's the one who created us and he's omniscient, so he already knows if we will pass this test of his or not... yeah..."
>"This patches my retarded ideology, allowing me to consider myself both a believer and a smart individual."

PANTS ON HEAD RETARDED

[Anonymous No.22624525]

>>22624487
>So God is outside of or apart from the world?
You are asking for the nature of the universe's creation, which no one can answer.

[Anonymous No.22624549]

>>22624009
What about natural disasters?

[Anonymous No.22624556]

>>22624009
you have no idea what a valid argument is. the problem of evil is absolutely valid.

[Anonymous No.22624594]

>>22624525
right, so then how can you say that Panentheism is preposterous? My interpretation is consistent with Christianity. Didn't this conversation start because of anon saying Paul's interpretation of God was more transcendental than that of classical theism?

[Anonymous No.22625232]

>>22624594
Christianity isn't pantheism, God is equivalent with the universe. It goes beyond that. God is within all but contained nowhere. God is beyond the universe, transcending it.

Mystics like Pseudo Dionysus, Eckhart, Merton, Saint John of the Cross, etc. all speak about the leaves behind all positive conception of God. We must empty ourselves, becoming nothing so as to meet the pregnant Nothing of the Ground/Unground that is God.

God is always more, a true infinite (per Hegel). This isn't Pantheism or even most versions of Spinoza. Those miss the truly transcendent element in God, as do many Enlightenment theories of God, Kant, etc. It's not that Kant, Wittgenstein, etc. don't get at important things, same for Murdoch, but they miss the fully infinite element that seems so powerfully expressed in the NT and mystics, both Christian, Jewish, and Islamic. The Virgin Point of the Sufis, Ein Soph of the Kabbalah, the point is not perennialism. These traditions ARE different. It's that they are the same merely when it comes to going beyond in the looking inwards and upwards

[Anonymous No.22625250]

>>22621929
Sure.

Saint Boneventure's The Mind's Journey Into God is short, but dense and more philosophical.

Saint John of the Cross is more practical but drier.

The Mystical Theology by Saint Denis is the most direct on transcendence and very influential. Short too. I might start here.

Confessions is the most accessible, part prayer, part biography, but is long. De Trinitate is a wonderful dialectical psychological study of the way man reflects the image of God in a tripartite fashion and great too.

Or get exposure to a bunch. William Harmless' Mystics is absolutely fantastic, letting mystics speak in their own words through copious excerpts linked into coherent summaries. He does Evagrius, Saint Bernard, The Mind's Journey Into God, Merton, Eckhart, Hildegard, Rumi and Dogen for non-Christians. Light to Light is another good anthology, but not as good of a view of the whole IMO.

Merton's The Inner Experience is another good source that draws heavily on many medieval writers and zen writers.

[Anonymous No.22625255]

>>22625250
Harmless' book on Augustine, "In His Own Words," is amazing too. A towering achievement of consolidating so many works and good excerpts into a shorter work. But Augustine is too hung up on Plotinius, Porphery, and Proclus go get as directly at transcendence in the same way as some others. Still great

[Anonymous No.22626263]

>>22625232
>Christianity isn't pantheism
I agree with your bottom paragraph, but I said panENtheism not pantheism, there's a big a difference.

[Anonymous No.22627763]

>>22624594
not sure which anon you think you're talking to but my messages are
>>22624525
>>22624476
I never said Panentheism is preposterous

[Anonymous No.22627770]

>>22618495
lol so true

[Anonymous No.22627775]

>>22618686
>If God is all-good
you problem is assuming you know what is good

[Anonymous No.22628639]

>>22621474
would be nice if there was a Plantinga revival around these parts.

[Anonymous No.22628699]

>>22626263
Oh, right. Totally agree then.

I do wish whoever coined the term had considered that pantheism and panentheism look almost exactly the same.

There is this neat phenomena where, even if you mix up all the letters in individual words, you can generally still read them quite easily, because in general we don't "read letters," but read "sets of letters." But when you take a somewhat uncommon word and modify it by adding two letters that already existed in the original word?

I only recently heard of panendeism, which I like more for being more unique.

[Anonymous No.22628709]

>>22616944
Shakespeare "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"

[Anonymous No.22629787]

>>22628699
>I do wish whoever coined the term had considered that pantheism and panentheism look almost exactly the same.
Some people call it neo-classical theism to avoid the confusion.

[Anonymous No.22630385]

12

[Anonymous No.22630415]

>>22621857
>Augustine's theory of evil as absence doesn't fall into these problems but it isn't easy to explain succinctly. Suffice to say, it makes more sense in the cosmology he inherits from Plotinus, Porphery, and Proclus. Because here, the lower hypostases have no causal effect on the higher hypostases which are "more real" because they are more necessary and more self-determining. It isn't quite Shankara's idea of Maya, illusion, but it's gets close in some respects. Augustine's point is that evil isn't its own essence, but a corruption of essence, and essences are more real. Thus the higher is without evil, evil emerges from the corruption of the lower, a consequence of freedom to sin that has been enacted.
Are you familiar with Plato's The Sophist (redefinition of non-being as "other than", because non-being as "is not" is gibberish) or Heidegger's concept of being as encompassing both presence/absence? How do you think that might complicate the ontology of evil?

[Anonymous No.22630419]

>>22616944
Aquinas to Mill is TOO LONG for a headcanon

[Anonymous No.22630498]

>>22621591
>Never got, why Christianity necessitates an omni-potent instead of a maximally-potent god entity.
Could you explain more about the difference? Or what the doctrines should to be clear and consistent?

[Anonymous No.22630628]

>>22624517
You’ve always been retarded
>source: I’m inside your walls

[Anonymous No.22630751]

>>22630498
NTA but I'd say that omnipotence does not entail being able to do that which is logically contradictory

[Anonymous No.22630754]

The problem of evil was literally solved in patristic times with Irenaeus and Augustine.

[Anonymous No.22630763]

>>22630754
Then why were Mill and James so bothered by it that they relinquished God's omnipotence?

[Anonymous No.22630766]

>>22618241
>God can do anything
>except these things that I listed
>but he can still do anything because, uh

>oh wait, it's because he just naturally can't do those things
>but despite not having the capacity to do those things, he's still perfect, because, uh

I'd say you people aren't sending your best, but sadly, you are. just abandon logic and say you believe because you believe, I could actually respect that

[Anonymous No.22630774]

>>22623348
no, it wouldn't. if I point a gun at you and tell you to give me your wallet, you still have free will to either do so or not do so. the same would be true for your god.

[Anonymous No.22630793]

>>22630498
Sounds like he’s arguing for an Orthodox theology if I’m not mistaken

[Anonymous No.22630798]

>>22630763
Just Anglos doing Anglo things

[Anonymous No.22630845]

>>22616944
Yes, NDErs have answers to all of that. Basically you choose to come here voluntarily. God wants us to experience everything we wish to experience. We come into human life to experience what it is like being a human. So, be a human! And suffering is part of being a human. You can leave back to paradise whenever you want via suicide.

And NDEs are actually solid proof of life after death, because anyone can have them if they come close to and survive death. And they are so extremely real to those who have them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U00ibBGZp7o

As this NDEr described their NDE:

>"Now, what heaven looks like? 'OMG' doesn't even describe how beautiful this place is. Heaven is, there are no words. I mean, I could sit here and just not say anything and just cry, and that would be what heaven looks like. There are mountains of beauty, there are things in this realm, you can't even describe how beautiful this place is. There are colors you can't even imagine, there are sounds you can't even create. There are beauties upon this world that you think are beautiful here. Amplify it over there times a billion. There are, it's incredibly beautiful, there's no words to describe how beautiful this place is, it's incredibly gorgeous."

And importantly, even dogmatic skeptics have this reaction, because the NDE convinces everyone:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/202204/does-afterlife-obviously-exist

So anyone would be convinced if they had an NDE, we already know this, no one's skepticism is unique.

>muh brain chemistry

Neuroscientists are convinced by NDEs too. What do skeptics think they understand that neuroscientists do not?

>muh DMT causes it

Scientifically refuted already, and NDErs who have done DMT too say that the DMT experience, while alien and really cool and fun, was still underwhelming to the point of being a joke when compared to the NDE.