Hunter: The Vigil

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

QualitySteel — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:46:17 GMT

GARdian:
Killin' witches for the Lord, Hell Yeah.

God is in His heaven, and all is right with the world.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

GARdian — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:27:44 GMT

Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

And here I thought we were gonna have a flame war about DARK EVIL CHRISTIANS again. What a shame.

For all it's worth, being a Catholic myself I personally greatly enjoy how the MM and Christians in general are presented. Killin' witches for the Lord, Hell Yeah.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

Black Flag — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:20:50 GMT

I think the OPs start this shit every now and then just so they can put their particular religious views on stage for a bit and play witness to the heathens. Then a bunch of similar folks jump in to debate them. It really belongs in off-topic, if that.

I mean, come on... The point of contention the OP brought up is simply too arcane for the average person to give a shit, even if they did understand the nuance involved (which I'd bet even the average Christian wouldn't). No outsider is going to come away with any opinion whatsoever based solely on that, factually correct or not. Me, I'm not ignorant of Christianity by any means, and I've never even heard of any of this Alpha/Toronto stuff and so really couldn't care less.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

MILLANDSON — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:20:31 GMT

Anton Sugar:
MILLANDSON:
goes to show you can indeed have a sensible religious discussion without it turning into a flame-fest...

Yeah, people normally don't believe me when I say that though.

Well, I manage it fine with my friends, but we're all mostly flexible on this sort of thing.

Back when I was doing my Politics degree, we had an interesting debate on religion and it's place in the modern world, which was also interesting, but since most of us were planning to become either politicians or lawyers, we all know we're going to Hell anyway ;)

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

Anton Sugar — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:40:37 GMT

MILLANDSON:
goes to show you can indeed have a sensible religious discussion without it turning into a flame-fest...

Yeah, people normally don't believe me when I say that though.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

SunlessNick — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:52:17 GMT

The Christian belief in God's total omnipotence fails if there is anything, even the logically impossible, that God can not do. The question is therefore important. - Christiangoth

That requires seeing omnipotence differently from omniscience and omnipresence. I've never seen anyone argue that God is in places that don't exist, or knows information that doesn't exist - which limits omniscience and omnipresence to those things that are real. Omnipotence, however, is generally taken to apply to any action that can be conceived - if it were taken the same way as the other two, then logically impossible actions would be "unreal" and an omnipotent being not required to be able to do them.

In Jewish mysticism, there is a specific limit on what G-d can do: create a universe that is both perfect and separate from him; which is why some of the work of perfection must be undertaken by humanity (the Law is an expression of G-d's faith in humanity that this can be done).

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

WhiteOakDragon — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:23:16 GMT

Christiangoth:
In the scenario in which some law (which I shall just call "Law") precedes God, God in fact has an origin. He is not eternal. Law is. Now God may in fact be a created being, in which case He is not possessed of greater omnipotence, subject to Law rather than the creator/definer of Law, created, and not the first thing to exist. Reading such a list of traits, this would hardly seem to be God at all, but some sort of a lesser celestial being. Whether it was Law that created God or a third thing that created God, God would hardly seem worthy of worship. Of course, God may have spontaneously generated. If He did so out the rules set forth by Law then it still seems that Law is His creator. If He did so outside of Law, perhaps Law allowed but did not mandate God, then He still hardly seems to be anything more than a being like us living within the bounds of His existence. Merely, His existence is just one of greater power than our own.

Try thinking of it this way: God and Law are one and the same. Law didn't create God, because Law IS God. The universe works the way it does because it is an extension of God's nature. Could God change his nature? I suppose he could. However, if God is already perfect, then what need of change would there be? If a perfect being changes, would it not cease to be perfect? Or do we simply blow off the question by saying 'Whatever God does or changes to is perfect because it's God'? I mean, if God one day decided that the universe no longer needed its Creator, and decided to end his own existence by ceasing to have power and turning himself into a mouse to live out a simple life until death claimed him, would that mouse then be the only perfect being in existence, despite being just a normal mouse like any other, simply because once upon a time that mouse was God?

Christiangoth:
The practical difference between greater omnipotence and lesser stems from the conclusions of the above possibilities. If God is not possessed of greater omnipotence then it seems that He has either in some way sacrificed His greater omnipotence, which seems unlikely, or that He is unworthy of worship and not the creator of all things and may be created, in which case we should seek to know His creator.

So the purpose of worship is only to honor the source of creation? If there was just some big vortex of energy that eventually spawned a God who decided to create the rest of the universe and us, he is unworthy of our worship because there was something there before him? Isn't that kind of like saying that you shouldn't celebrate Mother's Day because your grandmother gave birth to your mother? Or, to put it another way, if a being is incapable of doing two mutually exclusive things simultaneously and having both be wildly successful, it is still just a worthless piece of crap like the rest of us, albeit one with more power? Hell, in the boulder example tossed around so much, even if it worked the way you say it would, it would still be yet another limit on God's power. Personally, I don't see any reason why there must be 'greater omnipotence' for a being to be worthy of our worship.

Christiangoth:
So why is it good to feed the starving?

A fair point (though one I think could be asked for any of the explanations for the nature of good). I suppose it could be argued that the greatest good would be for us to let them starve to death, and off ourselves in the process so that humanity can just die out. The reason it is good to feed the starving is because our culture considers human life (and our own survival) to be valuable. We call that which benefits us good, and that which harms us evil. Just think of all the bastards out there that are going around butchering other people because they think that they themselves are good, and that anything they do is good. We call them evil, but try to explain to them where they're going wrong, and they'll knife you for blasphemy (or possibly just for your tennis shoes). Morality is decided upon by a society. If morality was a set of black and white laws written in stone by God, then all societies would uphold the same code of morality (and for that matter, other species likely would, too). The very fact that it differs between cultures is pretty good evidence to me that morality is based in society rather than a force inherent to the entire universe.

Christiangoth:
However, any argument has more than one premise. "I think" is a premise and "I am" is his conclusion, but he has an implicit premise in there. He implicitly states "if I think then I am." He fails to base that on anything. One might argue that it is intuitively obvious, but it is intuitively obvious based on our perceptions of math, logic, and reality, and those perceptions do not exist if we ourselves do not exist. Since he was trying to demonstrate that he existed, he couldn't soundly rely on something that required his existence to be reliable. Doing so created a circular argument. What justification do you have for your own existence?

No. A circular argument is saying something like "The Bible is the unfailing, literal Word of God because the Bible says so, and as the unfailing literal Word of God we must believe it when it says so." The argument of "I think, therefore I am" is a baseline because if there is thinking, there is something doing the thinking. Does it mean that you exist in the way you think you do? No, not at all. You could be nothing but thoughts. That is still something existing, though, in some form or another. Granted, this premise only holds true for each individual. You can prove you exist to yourself by realizing that you're thinking, but you can't prove that I exist as anything more than a figment of your imagination. Oddly enough, though, I consider this a premise in support of the existence of one or more Gods.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

Christiangoth — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:57:40 GMT

WaywardPaladin:

If He would that not one would perish, why not simply change the rules for admission into Heaven? Since He did it, that act would be good, and now that everyone has Salvation, that is good too. Oh, but would that violate free will by forcing the gift of salvation upon them? Doesn't matter, because violating free will is now good.

Questions of why God has made things as they are, if God exists (which I obviously believe), are useless. If God is responsible for the creation of everything from matter and energy to space and time to math, logic, and the basic concepts which we intuit, even laying aside whether He created and/or defined goodness, then there will always be questions of why He chose to make things as they are. No matter what alternative one posits, God could always have made things different, or even better. God, being omnipotent, is not limited by the degree of what we would find good with which He could have instilled an alternative Creation. The problem is that having made the most unfathomably good (from our current perspective) Creation, we could still dwell in it and ask "why did God not make things better? Wouldn't that have been good?" Since we could always ask this question, we see that it is a question asked regardless of what God does. Of course, the question ignores that God could always have made things worse, unfathomably worse, and then worse than that, and made the state of that Creation the baseline for desirability and undesirability. Simply put, this is a question which continually asks "why not something else" without addressing the equally meaningful question "why not this?" Yes, God could have created anything. He (and this is operating under the assumption at the top of this paragraph that He exists) created this, and that is what has been done.

Now the possibility for a Creation of a different nature wasn't what you were addressing. You are talking about the creation of Good. I've described the potential for a new Creation as an illustration. In the same way that God could create a different Creation, He could create a different Good. Why has God made the current Good to be Good? Why not an alternative Good? My response to this question is the same as to the question of an alternative creation. Why not this Good? In the absence of Good there is no standard by which to measure which potential Good would have been best; there is no "best!" Any Good would have been well and truly Good, and this is the Good that we have.

WaywardPaladin:
As for the omnipotence thing, I think it is mostly a language problem.

If power is:
ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.

...There isn't much practical difference between me saying God can be omnipotent without performing nonsense, and you saying that God can both perform and not perform nonsense at the same time.

That "language problem" had occurred to me as well. It seems to me that the only truly useful concept of omnipotence is that if it is asked if the omnipotent can do something then the answer is "yes." If there is anything to which the answer is "no" then we are not describing "all power," but rather "great power." The being is capable of doing many things, but not all things. There are laws to which it is subject. One must then ask where those laws come from - either they or precedent to or co-eternal with the subject in question, in this case God, or God created the laws and was once not bound by them (true omnipotence sacrificed), or God created them with retroactive effect (total self-denial of omnipotence). I'll offer the caveat again that verb tense for creation before the creation of time fails me, and the separate caveat that a truly omnipotent being would have infinite other options, but these are the four of which I am capable of meaningfully conceiving.

In the first two of those options we see that God in question is not only truly omnipotent and never was, having things that He can not do (but offering the caveat that He might still be capable of doing "all things that are possible," the form of omnipotence you have proposed which we might call "lesser omnipotence" simply because it is obviously lesser than the form of omnipotence which I propose "greater omnipotence"), but that God is also not the creator of all things. In the scenario in which some law (which I shall just call "Law") precedes God, God in fact has an origin. He is not eternal. Law is. Now God may in fact be a created being, in which case He is not possessed of greater omnipotence, subject to Law rather than the creator/definer of Law, created, and not the first thing to exist. Reading such a list of traits, this would hardly seem to be God at all, but some sort of a lesser celestial being. Whether it was Law that created God or a third thing that created God, God would hardly seem worthy of worship. Of course, God may have spontaneously generated. If He did so out the rules set forth by Law then it still seems that Law is His creator. If He did so outside of Law, perhaps Law allowed but did not mandate God, then He still hardly seems to be anything more than a being like us living within the bounds of His existence. Merely, His existence is just one of greater power than our own.

If instead God is co-eternal with Law then there is little difference from if He spontaneously generated with Law allowing but not mandating His generation. He still finds Himself, from His beginning, subject to Law. He is still not the creator of Law. He is still therefore just a being subject to His existence as we are to ours, and still unworthy of worship.

If God created Law with retroactive effect then I see less problem. However, I would suggest that it seems unlikely to my mortal mind that God has willingly sacrificed greater omnipotence for lesser omnipotence. Further, this option still suggests that God could have been possessed of greater omnipotence if He had wanted to be. If instead God created Law and bound Himself to it, but without retroactive effect, then God actually was once possessed of greater omnipotence. Again, it seems unlikely to my mortal mind that He would sacrifice this for less omnipotence, but the point is that greater omnipotence in this case once actually existed. In either of these cases, there is no reason to think of greater omnipotence as never having been possible for God.

The practical difference between greater omnipotence and lesser stems from the conclusions of the above possibilities. If God is not possessed of greater omnipotence then it seems that He has either in some way sacrificed His greater omnipotence, which seems unlikely, or that He is unworthy of worship and not the creator of all things and may be created, in which case we should seek to know His creator.

WaywardPaladin:

Though it does remind me of the central plot of a graphic novel called Lucifer, where in order for somthing truly random to happen, God had to step outside the universe.

Really? Was it any good?

WhiteOakDragon:

This operates on the principle that morality is a concrete, black and white force. Having morality 'decided by God' does make it arbitrary and meaningless, because God could change His mind at any minute. If God decides what good and evil are, tomorrow he could decide that its good to chop our children into little pieces and feed them to the neighborhood cats. Frankly, I don't care if a deity says something like that, I'd still consider it morally wrong. Likewise, I'd consider feeding the starving to be an act of good even if God decided tomorrow that doing so is evil. Saying that the only meaningful explanation for what makes something moral is 'because God said so' isn't really much better than saying 'because WhiteOakDragon said so', and seems a bit shakier than 'because we have considered this as a whole and have come to determine that what benefits us the most will be good'.

So why is it good to feed the starving?

WhiteOakDragon:

No, God isn't bound by logic. However, logic, being what it is, would not be able to go against God. That means that even where God is concerned, circular argument are meaningless, because God would not require one. For God to be the foundation of other meaningful arguments, God would need to be a logical starting point for them.

God would not require anything to accomplish any end, being possessed of the ability to achieve anything by any means. However, He might do anything, including creating something which defies logic, such as a single, meaningful circular argument.

WhiteOakDragon:

Personally, I think the only reasonable foundation one can build upon is the existence of the self.

Descartes tried that. He had to justify his own existence and so he said "I think, therefore I am." However, any argument has more than one premise. "I think" is a premise and "I am" is his conclusion, but he has an implicit premise in there. He implicitly states "if I think then I am." He fails to base that on anything. One might argue that it is intuitively obvious, but it is intuitively obvious based on our perceptions of math, logic, and reality, and those perceptions do not exist if we ourselves do not exist. Since he was trying to demonstrate that he existed, he couldn't soundly rely on something that required his existence to be reliable. Doing so created a circular argument. What justification do you have for your own existence?

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

Christiangoth — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:54:26 GMT

glamourweaver:
Christiangoth:
Your teacher was wrong. Christians claim

Stop.

You may mean by this "many Christians claim" but it comes off as "all Christians claim" which is not something you have any right to assert. Many Christian philosophers have wrestled with these questions and come to different results.

Good call, although I would instead reword it as "traditional mainstream Christianity claims" rather than "some Christians claim." The point is that the question which the teacher seemed to indicate was unimportant is important if a large religious group's belief hinges upon that question having a counterintuitive answer, which is what WaywardPaladin and I have subsequently been discussing.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

MILLANDSON — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:07:48 GMT

Not being a philosophy student or having much interest in it, I was just curious to see what people's answers would be. Of course, it was kinda rendered moot by the only guy who was really saying that the Bible was the truth (because the Catholic Church says it is) dropped out of the debate just before I posted.

Still, seems to have brought up some sort of discussion, which is all I intended to do. Like I said, I'm nominally Christian myself (confirmed to the Anglican faith), so I wasn't trying to prove or disprove anything.

Reading the last couple of pages, where no one is arguing about if the Church is right or not... goes to show you can indeed have a sensible religious discussion without it turning into a flame-fest... it apparently just needs to not have very religious people involved.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

glamourweaver — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:32:41 GMT

Christiangoth:
Your teacher was wrong. Christians claim

Stop.

You may mean by this "many Christians claim" but it comes off as "all Christians claim" which is not something you have any right to assert. Many Christian philosophers have wrestled with these questions and come to different results.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

WhiteOakDragon — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:53:21 GMT

Christiangoth:
What they do not realize is that then God is omnipotent and further God is a subject of a pre-existing force which He can not override; logic. This means that logic is above God.

God would still be above logic, and it wouldn't have existed before Him because there wouldn't have been anything for it to do.

Christiangoth:
"It is useful to live according to this principle" may be practically meaningful, but its morally meaningless unless utility is demonstrated to be morally good, and since we are discussing the justification of morals one would be unable to establish such a thing. That just leaves "because God said so." We therefore see that in all answers other than "because God said so," morality is ultimately meaningless.

This operates on the principle that morality is a concrete, black and white force. Having morality 'decided by God' does make it arbitrary and meaningless, because God could change His mind at any minute. If God decides what good and evil are, tomorrow he could decide that its good to chop our children into little pieces and feed them to the neighborhood cats. Frankly, I don't care if a deity says something like that, I'd still consider it morally wrong. Likewise, I'd consider feeding the starving to be an act of good even if God decided tomorrow that doing so is evil. Saying that the only meaningful explanation for what makes something moral is 'because God said so' isn't really much better than saying 'because WhiteOakDragon said so', and seems a bit shakier than 'because we have considered this as a whole and have come to determine that what benefits us the most will be good'.

Christiangoth:
How can such a circular argument be inherently meaningful? This goes back to that aforementioned principle: God is not bound by logic. Logic is God's creation. He existed before it (though He may have made it before time, which makes verb tense a difficult thing, but the principle is that He exists independently and outside of logic). Since He is not bound by it, He can be a self-justifying principle in a metaphorically significant rather than arbitrary way, and therefore He can be a foundation upon which to build other meaningful arguments.

No, God isn't bound by logic. However, logic, being what it is, would not be able to go against God. That means that even where God is concerned, circular argument are meaningless, because God would not require one. For God to be the foundation of other meaningful arguments, God would need to be a logical starting point for them. Personally, I think the only reasonable foundation one can build upon is the existence of the self.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

WaywardPaladin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:41:27 GMT

Yes, "good that good is good", but due to a quality of the universe, not that of a being capable of making decisions. Once you ascribe it to a being that makes decisions, then you ask why did it make that decision? Why doesn't it change it?

If He would that not one would perish, why not simply change the rules for admission into Heaven? Since He did it, that act would be good, and now that everyone has Salvation, that is good too. Oh, but would that violate free will by forcing the gift of salvation upon them? Doesn't matter, because violating free will is now good.

As for the omnipotence thing, I think it is mostly a language problem.

If power is:
ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.

And a proposed act is one that by definiton of doing it, you have not done it, then I'm content with that being silly gibberish and not something worth considering. More worthy questions like, "Can God sin?" exist. There isn't much practical difference between me saying God can be omnipotent without performing nonsense, and you saying that God can both perform and not perform nonsense at the same time. Otherwise you get into the trouble of "Omnipotence is the power to do the impossible, which means that it is in fact possible, so God can in fact not do anything impossible, because he automatically makes it possible, blah blah blah...."

Though it does remind me of the central plot of a graphic novel called Lucifer, where in order for somthing truly random to happen, God had to step outside the universe.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

Christiangoth — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:26:07 GMT

WaywardPaladin:
He was NOT saying that God wasn't omnipotent, but that such a question does not intrude upon His omnipotence. I think the simplest way would be to say "Omnipotence is the infinite power to do something, but something has to be able to be done"

Ah, but "that which is impossible" is something. You yourself say that omnipotence is the infinite power to do something. Thus omnipotence would necessarily entail infinite power to do that which is impossible.

WaywardPaladin:
I believe the concept was that "Good" being an intrinsic aspect of the Universe which God knows and imparts to us, is better than saying that God decided what was good and bad without anything to consider and information to use to decide that.

Why is the one better than the other?

WaywardPaladin:

Wouldn't by this line of thought, if he chose to do evil, and all that comes from Him is good, thus it would be good, then evil actions on his part would be good?

Yes, except that if evil was good then it wouldn't be evil, it would be good. We would have a different concept of what good was, but it would still go back to the intrinsically meaningful origin of the divine. However, it is to God's glory that He has chosen life, love, selflessness, honesty, and the like to be good. And why is this to His glory? Because they are good things! I'm fully aware of the fact that I basically am saying it God is good for deciding that these things are good, because they are good, because He decided that they are. That's sort of the nature of contemplating the origin of goodness. One must accept that the principles of goodness which we know are good, and that it is good that goodness is founded upon good principles. Even with the "intrinsic aspect of the Universe" that you propose, it would still, in short, be good that good is good. The only difference is that in my view the being responsible for goodness is worthy of credit for it.

Re: Portrayal of Christians in Witch Finders

WaywardPaladin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:06:42 GMT

Christiangoth:
Your teacher was wrong. Christians claim that God is omnipotent, that He can literally do anything. The Christian belief in God's total omnipotence fails if there is anything, even the logically impossible, that God can not do. The question is therefore important.

Omnipotent
adjective

1.	almighty or infinite in power, as God.

2.	having very great or unlimited authority or power.

Christiangoth:
Your teacher was wrong. Christians claim that God is omnipotent, that He can literally do anything. The Christian belief in God's total omnipotence fails if there is anything, even the logically impossible, that God can not do. The question is therefore important.

So your answer to such a question is, to say, green is green and not green at the same time. That is a nonsense answer, and unfalsifiable dogma. His point being, that it is useless to argue such a thing because you can't come to a conclusion that makes sense because the question invalidates itself.

He was NOT saying that God wasn't omnipotent, but that such a question does not intrude upon His omnipotence. I think the simplest way would be to say "Omnipotence is the infinite power to do something, but something has to be able to be done"

Christiangoth:
Ah, the Euthyphro problem, if memory serves. Consider this: all morality is arbitrary without a somehow meaningfully self-justifying principle.

I believe the concept was that "Good" being an intrinsic aspect of the Universe which God knows and imparts to us, is better than saying that God decided what was good and bad without anything to consider and information to use to decide that. Now, if you wish to say "God was the earliest thing to exist, God is "made up of" Good, or "IS Good", then at the very least you're saying that "Good" and "God" have equal seniority in this universe, being one and the same, but God did not decide then what was good and bad.

Christiangoth:
As God is the principle upon which goodness is meaningfully based as discussed above, then it becomes unuseful to think of God as following the rules of goodness. More accurately goodness itself, a very real, meaningful, and metaphysically true concept of goodness, follows the rules of God. Now of course, being possessed of omnipotence God can choose to do evil, but it is in His nature to not choose this, and it is good, for He is good.

Wouldn't by this line of thought, if he chose to do evil, and all that comes from Him is good, thus it would be good, then evil actions on his part would be good?