"You previously defined perfect charity as an act; now you are defining charity as an attribute of an act."
YOU: "I reviewed previous postings and could not find this reference"
As the President said: It depends what you mean by "is"--LOL!
Message 17456291
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"Some minor disagreement here: I described charity in a previous post as existing on a continuum that ranges from perfect charity (no return to the giver) less charitable, more charitable, neutral, and abusive. This being the case you could consider charity, the extent of it or lack of it as a quality of ALL acts"
You are falling all over yourself here. Describing charity as being measurable by degrees of perfection does not mean that, should content of a single attribute be reduced to a nullity, you can continue to describe such erased content as having a quality reflective of its previous essence. Where a quality is void it is without essence and can hardly be an attribute of any act which lacks it.
We don't say that because kindness may be measured, that therefore all acts have the quality of kindness, even when kindness is lacking. We do not say, that because malice can be manifested in different orders of magnitude, that all acts have the quality of malice, even when malice is lacking. You cannot attach a quality to nullity.
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You have stated that all acts are charitable, which is nonsense as I have shown. You have also said that God expects nothing in return for His charity (the quality you claim as being in All His acts).
My contention was precisely that the type of entity, who you are deciding to put in charge of the universe, would be precisely like that: indifferent, unfeeling, untouchable, unconcerned--not affected, changed, or moved by any event or condition. Your inability to adduce a single example of something that would "matter" to God, without compromising "the "All Powerful" being of God" as you put it, would seem to validate my contention. If I said that all cats were fat, you could prove me wrong by showing me one thin cat. I have said that no acts of God (as you have described Him both as Being and as Essence) matter to God. You only need to show me one contrary example to prove the statement wrong.
If you do think of anything that matters to God or attracts His concern, then we may revisit the issue. However, it seems to have been settled.
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On to other matters. The infinite entity you describe was clearly all that existed at one time. Nothing else is infinite, so there had to be a point in time where there was only God as being--only God as essence.
Clearly then, everything which exists was brought forth out of the Nature and the Will of God. What we call evil (violence, cruelty, sadism, enjoyment of suffering, etc.) flows from God's Nature...unless it always existed, or unless there is more than one Supreme Being--both concepts being contradictory and necessarily false.
You cannot say that God is the author of good, charity, etc. without acknowledging that He is the author of greed, sadism, racism, killing for pleasure, etc--for all these things exist, and they did not exist prior to God. They were brought into existence out of the Nature of God. Humans cannot create anything ultimate. Humans did not create the grounds for good and evil. No more did they create earthquakes, lightning, or the law of Gravity.
There was nothing outside of God. God was complete, and God was ALL. When God put evil in the world, it came from His Will as did all of creation--both actual and potential. Hate and viciousness and all the hurt which plague the world could not have originated anywhere else than in the Nature of God (assuming your all powerful, complete, and perfect stuff is all hunky dory).
Why would a complete and perfect being change anything? What could be the motive for change when motive--by your own definition--cannot exist in God's Nature. Nothing can act as a motivator to a Perfect and complete being. Nothing can motivate Him either internally or externally. There can be no motive. There can be no reason. Creation would have been a random and purposeless act as the Nature of God and thus of Perfection.
You can answer my direct questions about god with evasions, or "I don't knows". You can dodge, weave, or muddle. But the questions remain, as do the contradictions and the absurdities. I could use your words of "Most Beneficent" or "all powerful" to describe a black hole. But you would no more believe that my black hole is "Most Beneficent" One, than I believe that your black hole is "Most Beneficent" One. |
