Clete said:
Logic was not created any more than righteousness or personality was created. Logic is an aspect of God's character. God is rational. This is the only rationally coherent manner in which to account for the existence of logic and thus must be true because of the impossibility of the contrary. Thus your IF's must all be presupposed and thus God cannot do the logically absurd because to do the logically absurd would be to not do it (i.e. it is a violation of the law of non-contradiction).
Did you even hear your circular reasoning? First you claimed that "God is rational." Then you justified your claim by stating, "This is the only rationally coherent manner in which to account for the existence of logic and thus must be true because of the impossibility of the contrary." The last time I checked if you try to prove something on the basis of what you are trying to prove, you have proved nothing. You in essence have said "God is rational because God is rational, therefore we cannot say that God is "irrational".
Rationality and logic are creations of men, despite what you have been taught in your schooling that they are character-trait of God. The reason I say this is that logic and rationality are nothing more than frameworks of observation and sets of norms by which the human is "best" able to interact with the world around him or her. But this is nothing more than the mind's attempt to abstract the world around it, and to draw from those abstractions (those simplifications) meaningful data. So, when we see a line at the horizon, our brain is taking the data that is being received (through our eyes) and is interpreting that data according to a set of norms and principles already imbedded in the brain (imbedded not from birth but from early formation in childhood). So the line we see in actuality is nothing more than a line drawn by our brain to help make sense of the distinction between the sky and the land (or the sea). Not all people would see the line that we see. I'll illustrate for you another example. The Mbuti tribe is a pygmy tribe in the Congo region of Africa. They live in the jungle and do not ever leave the jungle, except to trade with other peoples in small clearings of the jungle made for farming. Now western anthropologists have gone to this people and have "observed" them and their way of life. I read an anthology of a particular anthropologist who took one of the members of the tribe on a trip out of the jungle and onto the open plains of Africa (and to the ocean). This caused great fear in the young man from the tribe, not because he was easily frightened, but because the logic and rationality that were formed in him from his childhood onward was entirely grounded on his life in the jungle. He had no sets of norms by which to make sense of the open plains. He had never dealt with distances greater than 50 yards ahead of him. So when he saw animals on the open plain, his first question to the anthropologist was, "Why are the animals so small?" And when the animals grew to be the size of the animals he knew he was even more amazed at such a feat. Was his logic wrong? No, it wasn't at all. It suited him very well for the life he lived in the jungle. But the logic he shared with his tribe (or that his tribe shared with him) was hardly universal.
Are you seriously going to claim, Clete, that you have obtained a universal logic? Logic is not a universal abstract thing (and if you believe that logic is universal and all-pervading you are grounding yourself in a very Greek understanding of the world). Christians do not believe that there is an all-pervasive, impersonal and abstract logic that governs the cosmos (as a character-trait of God). This was the Greek concept of "
logos". Christians took this universal of the Greeks and made it very concrete, "And the
Logos (which was a person, not a character-trait) became flesh (and blood) and made his dwelling among us." Ironically, this word
logos is the root from which we derive the English logic. So,
logos as an impersonal and and abstract concept is meaningless for Christians. True
logos is embodied, it is incarnate, and
logos is not a quality of God but is a person within the Godhead.
Clete said:
You don't know me and you assume way, way too much. You seem to assume that the arguments you heard against one man's position will work for any man's position because if they believe similar things they must have similar roots. This is a fallacy of logic and judging from your posts, you should have already been aware of that.
This is not a logical fallacy. You did the same thing with me in a previous post when I had said "I am not a philosopher" (and I might add you misunderstood what I was saying). When I said, "I am not a philosopher" maybe I should have explained to you that in no way was I denying the fact that I have been influenced by philosophy in my studies, and that those philosophies have had an impact on me. But my denial of the title "philosopher" is mostly on the basis that I will never accept the secular ground in which philosophy must take place. I am a theologian in this respect, not a philosopher. But you who would sit here and point out to me the fact that I cannot escape the formation in which I have been grounded, you would claim that you have done just that? You would say that you have taken the part of the Enlightenment that best suits you without being influenced by the very philosophers who stand at the head of that Enlightenment (whose ideologies pervade the humanism and individually centered life that would come about as a result and which is embraced in Christian emotionalism and revivalism)? You hypocrite. If you are going to make sure that I see the influence that has developed my thinking than you had better not accuse me of fallacy when I do the same for you.
Clete said:
I do not believe that every single thing that happens must be physically and specifically made to happen by God but that does not mean I believe that God is uninvolved in the creation. God is perfectly capable of creating a working system. In fact, if He were not able to do so, then neither would we be. The fact than men can create systems that work independent of any direct involvement of its inventor is proof that God is capable of the same sort of "engineering". And so, no the world would not instantaneously fly into pieces if God stopped holding it together. It would break down and fall apart eventually, of course. In fact, it is in the process of doing that right now. God's maintenance of the universe is analogous to our having to maintain any system here on Earth. The maintenance to a system is directly related to the systems complexity and indirectly related to the systems quality. That is to say that the maintenance required for a system goes up with the systems complexity and decreases with its level of quality. The maintenance level required for the universe is, I think, quite impossible to calculate because while it is wildly complex it is also of the highest quality possible in a sinful, fallen universe. I tend to think that God is a pretty good designer and so it would seem to me that the universe as a whole requires very little in the way of direct intervention. But where humans are involved things tend to get pretty messy pretty fast and thus a higher level of maintenance is called for.
And this is deism. God as the designer is the god of deism. This is to say that god creates an autonomous (sovereign) reality other than himself that can be sustained by the processes that god has set into motion. The god of deism is caught up into the reality of cause and effect, where god becomes the first cause for the creation. God sets things into motion, but the creation with regards to most cases is self sustaining. The god of deism is not absent from the creation, but the god of deism does not sustain the creation. The only way that god acts in the creation for deists is precisely the way in which you have described it, as an "intervention". And as I said before, if this is your god, then the statements of Paul are rendered utterly meaningless: "In God we live and move and have being...for God is not far from each one of us." And again, "By God and through God and to God are
all things." If God in the Creation has created nothing more than an autonomous reality, than it could not be said that this Creation, "lives and moves and has its being in God," nor could it be said that it is "by God and through God and to God."
Clete said:
But none of this speaks to the level of involvement that God has in this universe because just as Ford did not invent the car in order to give shade tree mechanics something to do, God did not create the universe just to see how well it would run on its own. Ford invented the car so that he could drive it and God created the universe and the people within it so that He could interact with and have a relationship with it. God is intimately involved in the universe because it was made for that purpose not because He is forced to in order to keep it from flying into chaos the moment He takes His eyes off it. God is a much better designer than that.
The fact that you would compare the reasoning for God's Creation with the Ford Company's reasoning for making cars shows just how corrupt you are (because Ford makes cars for profit, not to allow people to drive places). One could not say that "in Ford the cars live and move and have their being" nor could it be said that "by Ford and through Ford and to Ford are all cars." Clearly Ford's making of cars is no where near analogous to God's Creating the universe as related to us in the scriptures. Ford Company, however, bears a striking resemblance to the god of the deists (though Ford is much more "real" than their god).
Clete said:
Can you demonstrate that logic is an aspect of the creation without question begging?
As I said before, logic is a construction of humanity by which we order our observations in order to better manouver ourselves in this world. Logic is very concrete, and is tied to the body of the person that uses it. And logic is not the same from person to person, but logical constructs are established depending on our context.
Clete said:
If you cannot do that (which you can't), will you concede that God is rational and that logic is therefore an aspect of God's character and that therefore God cannot do the logically absurd and that therefore God cannot know that which cannot be known?
In the words of Paul of Tarsus, "Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength."
According to Paul God did just what you deny of him, that he took the logically absurd and made it the foundation for the life of his people.
Peace,
Michael
