On the contrary, nothing could be simpler than a dichotomy. God is simply good. Whatever is not good is not good.
Well, if I’m talking about the God I worship, Whom I have defined as Living Eternal Love, but you are talking about something undefined, why are we talking to each other?
I presume you mean as you (singular) think of it, unless you have developed some means of probing a consciousness other than your own.
At any rate, I am dumbfounded by the argument that His having made a free choice disqualifies Him as a Free Moral Agent. If you are using some epistemology other than reason, please identify it.
I’m afraid you either have misunderstood me or confused me with someone else. The only way I can see that you might surmise that from what I said would be something along the lines of the logical inability to unring a bell.
Nevertheless, it is. Experience implies a past. Eternity specifically disimplies a past.
I cannot imagine how you thought I was saying that, when I have illustrated forty ways from Sunday the exact opposite point.
From the closed reference frame of your consciousness, events must unfold over time. Specifically your time. But from your reference frame, a person travelling at near the speed of light appears to be in a “different” kind of time (though from his own reference frame, he doesn’t and you do).
From an Eternal Reference Frame, there is no future to be known.
Gratuitous.
That God is Good is an axiom, not an implication. We may talk about a god who is not good if you wish. We may also talk about a god who is made of Big Bang shrapnel if you wish. But my God is Love. I have defined Him that way. And He is very much like us. He is Sprit, just as we are.
Well, I believe I have defined Him to a fare-thee-well, but I think Jesus best described God’s metaphysical context thus: “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit… God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth… The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” — Jesus of Nazareth [John 3:6, John 4:24, John 6:63]
Does it stand to reason that if you were perfectly good you might love yourself? God, being Perfectly Good, naturally loves Himself.
You are correct, of course. I was trying to explain why I was having trouble understanding the nature of the good/evil split. Unfortunatly, this seems to have lead to me sort of half entering debate mode after that, which was unintentional. So several of my responses were, as you pointed out, not relavant. Sorry. I’ve been awake a bit too long.
I’ll ignore the crack at the end. What I thought you were saying was that by making a choice to be Good, God had removed from himself even the urges to be evil. You did not say this directly, but that is how I interpreted an “eternally good” spirit that had “made it’s choice” I do not see how he could remain a moral agent after doing so, so I assumed that I had been incorrect in my understanding. Which apparently I was, which I’ll get to in a second.
I belive it was the word ablative, actually. Which implied to me that human spirits were “chipped off” of God, which in turn implied that there was some kind of sequential process.
Yes, that IS how my mind works. You think it’s bad to argue with it, imagine how I feel. I have to try to think with it.
Ok, I get it now. I’m not unfamiliar with the concept, but I though you ment something else. This answers the question I had about how he could remain moral after choosing absolute good, as there is no “after.”
No, it doesn’t. I’m not witholding my love for myself until I acheve perfection. That would be odd, I think, because what I love in other people isn’t perfection, or the aspects of them that approach it. That is what I respect or admire about them. I love people, as I said, when I can feel empathy for them. As I’m not sure what empathy for myself would involve, I don’t really see how I could acheve it. Or why I would wish to.
But I think I understand your take on it, which is, after all, the point.
