What is Dart's concept of God?

[_EAllusion]

P.S. I don't know too much about Vox Day. But I do know he is a right wing blogger highly similar to Ann Coulter in tone and quality of argumentation.

Anyway, "In The Irrational Atheist he postulates a Game Designer God that is loosely based on the simulation hypothesis of Nick Bostrom as a potential answer to the theological problem of evil and also claims to refute the Euthyphro Dilemma."

As Gad would say, "Lol."

[_antishock8]

If you've taken notice of Dart's posts over the last year or so you wouldn't be surprised that he's a Vox Day disciple. He mimics him and a few other aggressive Christians who hide their theology in vague terms. If you were to place their postings on the Internet side by side you would be hard pressed to distinguish between them.

Again, Dart. Why all the subterfuge? You're no better than the Mormon apologists with whom you take umbrage who parse their theology with nuance and re-defined words. Shame on you.

[_EAllusion]

Just to clarify, I have read some Vox Day. But I've only read him when linked a few of his world net daily pieces choosen for the, "Omg! Can you believe this idiot?" factor. What I remember best about him is unbelievable misogyny, but that's neither here nor there to the topic at hand.

I just find the claim to have solved the Euthyphro Dilemma humorous. I looked up the relevant response and needless to say, it doesn't quite accomplish as advertised, mainly because he doesn't understand the argument in the first place. Oh well. Interestingly, in looking that up, I discovered that this is where Kevin is getting his new, bizarre - so wrong it's confusing -assertions regarding Popper, philosophy of science, and atheism.

[_EAllusion]

Not to hijack the thread, but check out this response from Vox from a criticism of his Euthyphro commentary:

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2008/04/in-d ... yphro.html

There is no "underlying argument", Socrates makes a specific and detailed argument with various assertions and assumptions along the way, and as I have shown, some of them are not logically justifiable. If you want an answer to what you describe as the modern terms, it is that something is moral because god commands it. God's game, god's rules.

Heh. Uh, Vox, the problem is if you accept that "horn" of the dilemma, that has certain negative logical consequences that is the essence of the argument. In this case, you face the arbitrariness and emptiness problems. Solving the dilemma would entail showing why those problems aren't actual logical consequences of selecting this route or why they aren't problems at all. Otherwise you can take the alternative horn, but that accepts that there exists some standard of morality logically independent of God, which also calls for the rejection of the idea that moral truth is contingent on God's will. Unless, of course, you can show how that isn't a logical consequence of saying that God commands X because X is good. Adopting divine command theory doesn't answer the dilemma. It just opens it up.

The dilemma is widely considered by theist and atheist philosophers alike to be a devastating refutation of thinking one can meaningfully define morality in terms of God's commands and you don't even seem to understand where the argument comes in. It's pretty clear that this results from not understanding the underlying argument derived from Plato's dialogue by modern philosophers.

[_EAllusion]

Incidentally,

Emptiness problem:

If the good is contingent on God's will, then any statement about God being good is a tautology and therefore empty of content and any prediction of God's behavior based on God's goodness is invalid. This is important for people who want to say things like, "You should worship God because he is good," as that is just saying, "You should worship God because he is God." That's nonsensical, no more meaningful than saying, "You should worship EA because he is EA." It also renders statements like, "God is good, so God won't lie to you," illicit, as God can do anything at any time and have it be good, because whatever he does is by definition good.

This is important, because believers in God often want to make these kind of statements and therefore accepting this consequence of their beliefs will be a problem for them.

Arbitrariness problem:

The more serious of the two, and really why DCT is a nonstarter in moral philosophy. God isn't picking commands based on what is moral and what is not, so God's commands are morally arbitrary. God had no moral basis to pick this command over that. To say something is good is to say it is the whim or nature of a particular third party, picked for no morally relevant reason over any other 3rd party. We could define morality in terms of my will, and this would not be any less helpful. Conformity to this standard, therefore, is morally arbitrary. This does not explain human moral language as it is actually used at all. It provides no insight. If this is what morality is, there's no real basis to care about what is moral.

You don't solve the Euthyphro dilemma by picking this. You fall victim to the force of its argument. It's like me saying I have a dilemma. If I do A, I'll be shot and killed. If I do B, I'll drown. You respond by saying, "No matter. Problem solved. Do B." Uh, thanks.

[_EAllusion]

Evangelicals on the street often answer the latter problem in one of two naïve ways.

First, they might assert that God, by virtue of his power, makes it in your interest to follow his commands, be it through a system of divine rewards and punishments or something else. However, if they are saying that one ought to do what is in one's own interest, they are rejecting divine command theory. They are no longer defining morality in terms of God's will. They are defining it in terms of self-interest, which divine will happens to affect. Now not only has Euthyphro has accomplished its task, but the defender is now left to defend the thesis that one ought to act in one's own interest. Ethical egoism, while not as bad off as divine command, has it's own severe problems with justification. If they are just saying that one's own interest provides a prudential reason to obey God's commands - i.e. morality - then they haven't answered the problem.

Second, they might assert that God's nature is moral and therefore, instead of saying something is moral because God commands it, they assert that it's both. C.S. Lewis tried this, for a famous example. This fundamentally misunderstands the problem. It just removes it one step back. Now instead of asking whether X is moral because God commands it or if God commands X because it is moral, we are asking if God's nature is moral because it entails commanding X or if X is moral because God's nature entails commanding it. The problem is actually about whether God's commands are necessarily moral or if they are contingent on his nature. If they are necessarily moral, that implies there is some logically independent standard of morality to constrict them. If God were to have a different nature, God would not be moral. Therefore, morality isn't logically dependent on God, ergo divine command theory is false. (For the theist who tries to resolve the problem of evil through divine command or justify belief in God through the existence of moral objectivity, those arguments are destroyed.) If they are contingent on God's nature - that is to say they could be different in some other world if God had a different nature - hello emptiness and arbitrariness problems.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Evangelicals on the street often answer the latter problem in one of two naïve ways.

First, they might assert that God, by virtue of his power, makes it in your interest to follow his commands, be it through a system of divine rewards and punishments or something else. However, if they are saying that one ought to do what is in one's own interest, they are rejecting divine command theory. They are no longer defining morality in terms of God's will. They are defining it in terms of self-interest, which divine will happens to affect. Now not only has Euthyphro has accomplished its task, but the defender is now left to defend the thesis that one ought to act in one's own interest. Ethical egoism, while not as bad off as divine command, has it's own severe problems with justification. If they are just saying that one's own interest provides a prudential reason to obey God's commands - i.e. morality - then they haven't answered the problem.

Second, they might assert that God's nature is moral and therefore, instead of saying something is moral because God commands it, they assert that it's both. C.S. Lewis tried this, for a famous example. This fundamentally misunderstands the problem. It just removes it one step back. Now instead of asking whether X is moral because God commands it or if God commands X because it is moral, we are asking if God's nature is moral because it entails commanding X or if X is moral because God's nature entails commanding it. The problem is actually about whether God's commands are necessarily moral or if they are contingent on his nature. If they are necessarily moral, that implies there is some logically independent standard of morality to constrict them. If God were to have a different nature, God would not be moral. Therefore, morality isn't logically dependent on God, ergo divine command theory is false. (For the theist who tries to resolve the problem of evil through divine command or justify belief in God through the existence of moral objectivity, those arguments are destroyed.) If they are contingent on God's nature - that is to say they could be different in some other world if God had a different nature - hello emptiness and arbitrariness problems.

I don't think this second defense of Divine Command theory is so unsalvageable, at least from the arguments you've given. Most mainstream Christians (I'm guessing) would stop you at "If God were to have a different nature..." and say "If He did, He wouldn't be God, and your rebuttal to DCT breaks down". Which makes kind of a weird sort of sense because, after all, Christians usually hold deity to be perfect, and because they belong to a monotheistic religion, think that there's only one way for it to be so. If one defines "God" as the literal Creator of the entire universe and its properties (which most Christians do), then Divine Command Theory starts to look an awful lot like Natural Religion, and converges with the "morality through reasoning" that you or I would recognize as ideal. Both theories would say that there are moral truths that are discoverable by reason and observation; the only difference between the two that I can see is that require there to be a supernatural agent at the end of the discovery process, while morality by reasoning would not. (I'd add that DCT would be shown to be inferior to its alternative on Occam's Razor grounds, in that case.)

Also, one thing I always admired about Mormonism is that it seemed to sometimes avoid this dunderheaded DCT-style thinking. Joseph Smith's statement, "And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it," seems much more compatible with independent, reason-based morality.

[_dartagnan]

Why are you so reticent to answer a couple of simple questions?

So because I dared to take a week off from the forum -as is my custom- to take care of regular, every day doings, I must be actively avoiding something? I still don't quite have the time to get into all this, but I was informed of this thread so I figured I would offer a quick response to ease your "disappointment."

You're obviously keen on sniping Atheism

Oh?

Please illustrate where I have ever criticized someone for simply being an atheist. Just once would be nice. Please illustrate where I have call someone an idiot for simply rejecting theism. You can't, because I haven't. Not even close.

But we all know this is preciely the attitde exhibited on this forum, towards anyone who would dare admit being a theist. My involvement in these atheism-related threads is in the role of the apologist for theism. This means I'm the one under attack, and this is proved by threads like these where some leap to ridiculous assumptions about my position, revealing their own agenda.

but when asked to lay out your brand of theism, in a clear and concise manner, you don't take it. That's strange.

I've answered these questions on numerous occasions. So many times, in fact, that I find it interesting that you could miss.

Here's what I think YOU think God is:

Straw man alert.

I think you're an "open theist".

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Wrong answer.

I think you adhere to that idea, without naming a specific god, to divert attention from the truth that you are a Christian. You tipped your hand when you mentioned Vox Day. From Wikipedia:

Talk about your non sequitur. I related something from someone who is a Christian, therefore I'm a Christian. No, worse, I'm a Christian "pretending" not to be. Gotcha!

This is the kind of rubbish one would expect from Schmo or mercury. But lets be real. You can't really expect rebuttals to atheistic arguments to come from non Christians only. Relating an argument from Vox Day makes me no more a Christian than relating Sam Harris makes Dawkins a Budhist. I mentioned Vox Day in reference to one particular sociological argument by Harris, to prove a point that Harris really makes stupid arguments.

Incidentally, I don't own his book. I just browsed through it one day at Borders and his detailed charts covering the political landscape of various counties caught my attention, so I read the details about what Harris was trying to prove. That is about as much as I have read from him (never knew he had a blog) but he did prove what an abolsute idiot Harris was on that particular point.

So. Dart has been a stealth Christian this whole time. Is this an apologist tactic?

No, but it is apparently a popular tactic among atheists here to insist on defining an opponent's position for easy dismantling. Dawkins loves to do this, completely misrepresenting religion, Christianity, etc. It seems your master has taught you well.

Quite frankly, it's likely he knows that anything he describes as a god is going to get shot down in bitter flames, and he just does have the balls to put it out there.

I already have, on numerous occasions. The simple fact is that I do not have a "concept" of God, nor do I need one to know God exists. This worked well for Einstein, as it does for the former atheist, Antony Flew. It works well for me just the same. To insist that I must incorporate God into something of a "scientific model," or else I have been somehow proven irrational, or wrong, is just a nother non sequitur gimmick employed by those who can't deal with the evidence. Dawkins is one. He thinks he can ignore the plethora of evidence for a superior intelligence by asking "what came before the creator?" and then with a wave of his magic wand, declare our nonanswer as proof we're being irrational.

I discovered that this is where Kevin is getting his new, bizarre - so wrong it's confusing -assertions regarding Popper, philosophy of science, and atheism.

You "discovered" no such thing. My argument regarding a popular atheistic reliance on Popper is based on my observations on this forum. Just do a search for Popper and you'll find all sorts of arguments (178 posts!) by the usual suspects here, regarding "falsification" and theism's so-called failure to have "explanatory power," which is another element of Popper's philosophy of science. Just as an example, thama once said, "To me, the main flaw in ID is one that you hinted at: it offers no real explanatory function not already offered in the other 6 options. Where did the intelligence come from?"

It amazes me how so many people respond like this and they actually think this serves as some kind of rhetorical tool to undermine the evidence. All I see here is a loyal mimicking of Dawkins.

I find it telling that after mentioning Flew, Einstein and McGrath, these guys have nothing to say. Instead, they want to focus on an invented scandal by Oppenheimer which they found on the internet - completely ignoring the fact that an interview with Flew is readily available to anyone who isn't too lazy to read it, and which proves that the book reflects his views exactly as it claims. Einstein and McGrath are ignored, and so is Glynn.

But guess what, didn't Kevin mention someone named Vox Day? Quick, do an internet search, find out if he is a Christian and let's rake him over the coals for being a Christian who can't know anything because he's, well, a Christian. It will give people the impression that we're actually raking Kevin over the coals!! What's more, we'll be able to claim Kevin is also a Christian!

This should give the cackling hens something to moan about for another week.

[_JohnStuartMill]

I already have, on numerous occasions. The simple fact is that I do not have a "concept" of God, nor do I need one to know God exists.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack. You're going to get a lot more crap for this statement than if you had just offered a somewhat-indefensible conception of God (or at least, you should).

[_antishock8]

What is your idea of god?

Dart: I do not have a "concept" of God, nor do I need one to know God exists.

What is your ontological explanation for this universe?

Dart refuses to answer.

So. Basically Dart has no concept of a god, but knows that one exists. Well, THAT is certainly an entertaining mental flop if I ever saw one!

"I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm certain I know what I'm talking about!!"

-----------

Dart, do you believe Jesus Christ existed?

What is your ontological explanation for the Universe?