Hi Bruno Marchal
God is just but he has to apply his justice to a
contingent, imperfect world-- although Leibniz
suggests that it is the best posible world.
The scientific method cannot tell the just from the unjust.
Would you trust your fate to the scientific method ?
I sure wouldn't.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/20/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-20, 05:45:13
Subject: Re: the "nothing but" fallacy.
On 20 Sep 2012, at 08:01, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/19/2012 10:50 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 11:09 AM, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/19/2012 5:41 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
Also, the concept of a super intelligent entity torturing someone may be
almost contradictory, for they may realize the identity of all minds, and
therefore they would be torturing themselves.
That would be an inconsistency of values, but not a logical contradiction.
The thing about religion is that we shouldn't believe it because it's
FALSE, not because it's BAD. Something could be BAD but TRUE. I find
it odd that both religious and anti-religious people often miss this
point and talk about the good or bad effects (respectively) of
religious belief.
Well of course that is because almost all religions claim that their revelation
defines what is good and bad, independent of mere human opinion. So if one
shows that the revelation's definition of good or bad is preposterous (like an
all loving God who tortures people for not worshipping Him) then at least that
much of the theology is false.
Yes, the hope for God is most of the time a hope for Good, and for ultimate
justice. Of course once we do theology with the scientific method, we have to
keep in mind not to fall in wishful thinking, even if it appears that wishful
thinking might play a role in the building of realities (as this can't be
excluded too).
Of course I mean "ideal science", as the human science is also influenced by
wishes.
"Either God wants to abolish evil and cannot; or he can, but
does not want to; or he cannot, and does not want to. If he
wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not
want to, he is wicked. If he neither can, nor wants to, he is
both powerless and wicked. But if God can abolish evil, and wants
to, then how comes evil in the world?'"
--- Epicurus
Good summary of a key theological problem. The platonist answer is that God is
impotent, on this. Matter is the evil locus where God lose control, a bit like
God cannot predict where you will feel after a self-duplication. In comp and
Platonism (in the greek old sense, not in math), and perhaps in QM, evil and
matter have a similar origin: indeterminacy.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
