Let’s say God is giving His followers guidance on how to bake bread. He instructs them to mix the dough and knead it.
Then he tells them to stop, cover it, and let it rise.
He has changed His instructions! He must not be infallible!
But of course that’s the correct way to bake bread.
So why would you assume that God relaying new instructions to His followers proves he’s fallible, or proves the followers were mistaken? Perhaps the followers were correctly relaying instructions from God, and Good’s instructions correctly changed in order to accomplish whatever His goal is.
But nothing in those links suggests that if Jesus is trying to get to the supermarket, he can’t turn left once he hits Main Street because His unchanging nature requires him to keep going in the same direction He started walking, like some sort of divine .50 caliber bullet.
Oh, c’mon. You couldn’t think of an example where something that was right before is wrong now, or the other way 'round? Your example is not one of a changed mind, it is one of a series of instructions spread out over time, without any contradiction at all. Now, if god told his people to toss out the dough, start from scratch and do it a different way, maybe we can talk.
Euthyphro’s dilemma comes up, as does special pleading. Do we have an independent method of determining whether something is harmful to society, or not? Can the extirpation of the preponderance of humanity be a legitimate method, nay, a laudable method, to achieving a goal when practiced by a benevolent being, yet be antithetical to our humanity? Is it even a good metaphor or moral lesson to have in a book inspired by a benevolent being?
This is reinforced in differences between the gospel and the OT. Did the dietary codes serve a legitimate moral impetus for those subject to them? If they were purely entrenched practical guidelines, why wasn’t such knowledge imparted in the scribes that recorded such details? Increased knowledge does not interfere with free will in any way, else even inspiring prophets would be undue influence on humanities free will.
Likewise with whether Jesus revoking the necessity to wash one’s hands served a moral purpose that is no longer necessary due to our increased practical knowledge. Under the principle of parsimony, we have to assume that an omniscient benevolent being would not have included any information that served no purpose. One can only hope that their benevolence would cohere with our definition of “good” (else such a God could declare rape as good by fiat) and that their pronouncements would follow roughly Utilitarian principles. If we accept that the interpretation or recording of the principles of such a being may be flawed, then we still need some other method of distinguishing between principles that are likely to be good: which is better than a secular morality?
No, no – you’ve dragged the discussion far afield. The answer is that God does not independently create the moral framework nor is he bound by some external moral framework – thus kicking Euthyphro’s ass. Rather, God’s very existence and nature is the standard for the moral framework.
But that’s not at all necessary to the resolution of the supposed contradiction we were discussing a moment ago. The claim was:
And I pointed out that the first assumption is untrue: God’s nature is unchanging. This does not imply that every single instruction God gives to mankind is unchanging.
Now, what’s the response? You ask how we know that our interpretation or recording of the principles of God are faithfully (ha!) capturing His actual instructions, but that is not a refutation of the explanation, is it?
My point was that you can assume God’s nature is unchanging, and assume that the church has correctly interpreted God’s word, without some inherent contradiction… even though God’s word has changed. Because it’s possible for God’s word to change, as God provides new instructions to humankind.
You may question how we know, but that’s not a contradiction – that’s an argument about how we know the model is correct, not an outright contradiction.
This isn’t avoiding the answer, it’s merely pushing the problem further back by limiting God’s omnipotence. Unless God has the power to change God’s nature, in which case the objectivity of the moral framework is lost.
Except we no longer hold his most recent instructions are objectively ideal for running society. We do not gouge out our eyes for committing adultery in our hearts, for instance. The Catholic Church does not keep a tab of confessions and limit them to seventy-seven. Some of us pray in public like the hypocrites do. Which standard do we use to judge which commandments are pertinent other than our independent morality and the context of the society we are in?
In nearly thirty-seven months, this is the first time I can recall this thread being so successfully hijacked. Congratulations, Bricker; you saw your chance and you leaped to seize it.
I only hope we can wrest it back on track in time for President Obama’s second Inaugural address.
Virginia Foxx, R-VA, stated “I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that”
Why? Because she managed to work her way through school in 7 years and thinks others should as well.
I’ve heard this same argument on the Dope from time to time. And it’s just as laughable coming from a politician as it is from fellow posters.
This is a breakdown of the average cost of education over the past 30 years.
If you graduated from college in 1980, your costs were on average 44% of what they are today. That’s adjusted for inflation.
Foxx graduated in 1968. Based upon my calculations, what took her 7 years to work through with no debt in 1968 would have taken a “kid” 22 years to do today. TWENTY TWO YEARS.
Yeah, you may graduate at 40 but you’ll be clear of debt and won’t that be a monkey off your back?
A personal story is generally presented to rebut the inference that whatever achievement under discussion is well-nigh impossible.
And it’s true that things today have changed… but that doesn’t account for people that are, today, putting themselves through school. So I grant you that dismissing Ms. Foxx’s experiences from 1968 may work, but how do you dismiss the people who are managing it today?
