Yes - Person A is saying "X causes Y", Person B is saying "actually, we can observe that Z causes Y", and person A is coming back to say "So X uses Z to cause Y."
Except I don't recall ever directly saying "X causes Y", just "X uses Z to cause Y". I may well have argued otherwise before, however.
Aqfaq: Valid response. On a semi-unrelated note, the irony of a TASer bringing up what is effectively a run restart as a counter-argument to something should not be lost on anyone present.
Not one rerecord, no.
(I realize the absurdity of implying that God is working a TAS, but the similarities between what we do as TASers and what I believe God has done as God are too amusing for me to overlook)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Can I, another Mormon, offer a little bit of context here?
Henry B. Eyering is the First Counselor of the First Presidency of the church; in simple terms, he's second in command here. In other words, he is a very high ranking leader of a large branch of Christianity*.
I remember a sermon this man gave - and I'm a little fuzzy on the specifics, so please bear with me - where he was attending a seminar or watching a presentation or something on something concerning astronomy, I believe. And in spite of this seminar or whatever detailing things that occured millions of years ago, he recalls having received a witness from God that what was being presented was true and worth studying.
Point being, Mormons and science - and I mean real science, not "science" - are two things not uncommonly seen together. Granted, a good many of us are like my grandfather, who thinks that claiming that the earth is older than 6,000 years is heresy, but many of us are perfectly comfortable discussing the behavior of our simian ancestors**.
Maybe it's a little confusing to see happen, and it can be frustrating trying to articulate exactly why it happens. But it happens, more often than you might think.
My personal thoughts? God made a grand, mighty, marvelous, beautiful, fascinating universe for us to live in. It'd be a sin to willfully remain ignorant of what's in it and how it works.
*Whether or not we qualify as Christians is neither here nor there, and is beside the point.
**The creator of Schlock Mercenary is, as far as I can tell, a practicing Mormon. The comic includes lots of hard science in it.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
We may yet do all of that. Recall a statement I made earlier - the beauty and blessing of Homo sapiens is that we are capable of changing ourselves outside the natural mechanism of evolution.
The examples you gave however, are not fixing the problems, they're working around them. Fixing them would require extreme genetic modification, which raises serious ethical questions, but also questions on what it means to be human.
Pokota wrote:
I want to. Right now, I say I would too. Herein lies the contradiction of omnibenevolence, and I actually have answers from within my own faith that answer this question - though many would argue that the answers are meaningless because they avoid the issue.
Recall that I am LDS. In our canon can be found this:
Moses 1:37-39 wrote:
And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words. For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
But just as you cannot teach a person to perform differential calculus without first ensuring that they have a firm grasp of the underlying principles of algebra, Heavenly Father cannot give eternal life without first ensuring we will not abuse it.* We have to prove that we are willing to obey eternal laws and principles, and Heavenly Father directly intervening during our trials and tribulations would invalidate that.
Death is part and parcel of living, and is per LDS teachings necessary for exaltation/eternal life.Jesus Christ, firstborn of Heavenly Father in the spirit and only begotten of the flesh, had to die before he could be glorified (though arguably Christ had other work to do that necessitated him to be dead to do). Bear in mind, that LDS doctrine equates Jesus Christ with Jehovah of the Old Testament, and that Heavenly Father is his own separate entity with the same goals (a good way to demonstrate the relationship between the members of the Godhead is to point to any TAS submission with plural authors - separate entities working in conjunction towards a common goal). This by itself, however, reintroduces the contradiction of omnibenevolence and requires further argument.
God will not override one's capacity to choose for themselves. Again, I have to point to LDS canon to support this argument, so I shall. Moses 4:1-4 wrote:
And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor. But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever. Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down; And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice.
At first glance, it's contradictory that Satan would save everybody while Christ would allow some to fall through the cracks. However, look at what Satan's words were again. At no point does he claim that all will be proven obedient, or that all would be prepared for eternal life. Under Satan's plan, an omnimaleficent diety would inevitably rise up into the eternities because there would be no proving, no trials, no nothing. If you think a non-interfering God is bad, try one that's actively destroying his own creation - or worse, destroying other creations.
*Footnote: Immortality and Eternal Life are not the same per LDS beliefs. I'll edit in or post the supporting scriptures when I find them again. Immortality is simply not dying again, and everyone (save for an infinitely small percentage of people born) is entitled to that through resurrection. Eternal Life is what we're trying to prove worthiness for.
This doesn't address my point, or if it does, I don't see how.
Reducing the suffering due to poorly designed genetics would not cause us not to experience life, nor experience death, nor violate our free will.
However, the very human advances in genetics and medicine which would be required to fix us could also in the same stroke cause us to not truly experience death.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
I'm starting to think we're arguing two different things, to be honest.
If I understand you correctly, you're approaching things from the point of view that "Because the design of the creation is flawed, there's no omniscient directing force." Is that an accurate simplification?
I think I'm arguing the following simplification in its place. "An omniscient directing force has given us room to direct and improve things ourselves, by designing a flawed creation." It's still a weak argument in that I'm relying on (il)logical leaps that I've demonstrated previously, but this is a statement that fits with my world view, and this is a statement that I am comfortable standing with.
E: reordered my argument to be more... I don't know what the word is. Clause order was wrong and gave an incorrect interpretation of what I'm going for. Also added a word to cut down on ambiguity.
If I understand you correctly, you're approaching things from the point of view that "Because the design of the creation is flawed, there's no omniscient directing force." Is that an accurate simplification?
More or less. It's a straight deductive argument.
1. A God is Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnibenevolent
2. Humans are flawed in severe ways that cause needless suffering.
3. Failure to correct this either demonstrates a lack of foresight, power, or kindness.
4. This is a contradiction of premise 1.
Pokota wrote:
I think I'm arguing the following simplification in its place. "An omniscient directing force has given us room to direct and improve things ourselves, by designing a flawed creation." It's still a weak argument in that I'm relying on (il)logical leaps that I've demonstrated previously, but this is a statement that fits with my world view, and this is a statement that I am comfortable standing with.
If you believe that God is also Omnibenevolent and Omnipotent, then that's not good ground to be standing on.
Purposefully designing a benignly flawed creation is fine. Puzzles and tinkertoys are tools that parents employ to cause their children to think and reason about the world around them.
However, puzzles aren't cancer. They're not crippling painful diseases. No parent would intentionally give their children leukemia in order to allow them room to "direct and improve things" on their own.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
However, puzzles aren't cancer. They're not crippling painful diseases. No parent would intentionally give their children leukemia in order to allow them room to "direct and improve things" on their own.
While this is a valid argument (and one that I have no solid response to at this time), would you have preferred that we not learn how to treat cancer ourselves and instead rely on a capricious inexplicable force?
However, puzzles aren't cancer. They're not crippling painful diseases. No parent would intentionally give their children leukemia in order to allow them room to "direct and improve things" on their own.
While this is a valid argument (and one that I have no solid response to at this time), would you have preferred that we not learn how to treat cancer ourselves and instead rely on a capricious inexplicable force?
Would you have preferred that we learn how to treat randomly exploding heads instead of relying on a capricious inexplicable force (that causes our heads not to randomly explode)?
That is to say, if cancer was not a concern we wouldn't even consider that we'd "lost an opportunity" to learn. And frankly, cancer in specific doesn't teach us anything that we wouldn't have learned on our own while investigating our genome.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
You are precisely right - in the absence of the inexplicable, we have no reason to investigate.
Let me ask you this: will there ever be a point where there are no inexplicable things to investigate?
You are precisely right - in the absence of the inexplicable, we have no reason to investigate.
Let me ask you this: will there ever be a point where there are no inexplicable things to investigate?
We have a minor misunderstanding, that wasn't my point.
My point was, we gain nothing from investigating cancer if cancer does not exist. At least nothing that we couldn't get from an unfocused study of the genome.
There is no downside to cancer never existing, just like there is no downside to us never having had a condition where, at random without warning, human heads explode.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Glad that got cleared up.
So - now to bring things back to the TAS analogy in the hopes that this clears up something I've started thinking lately (who it clears things up for remains to be seen). You specifically have done a TAS of Lagoon for the SNES. Would you say that, within the scope of that TAS, you were Omniscient and Omnipotent?
Glad that got cleared up.
So - now to bring things back to the TAS analogy in the hopes that this clears up something I've started thinking lately (who it clears things up for remains to be seen). You specifically have done a TAS of Lagoon for the SNES. Would you say that, within the scope of that TAS, you were Omniscient and Omnipotent?
No. Neither Omniscient nor Omnipotent.
Not Omniscient because I did not fully understand the inner workings of the game.
Not Omnipotent because I had to follow the rules of the game.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Not Omnipotent because I had to follow the rules of the game.
That is the important part, thank you for providing. Recall something I posited earlier. God will not override one's capacity to choose for themselves. Not cannot, but will not. If God is binding himself by even one condition, it follows that God is not Omnipotent within the scope of creation.
Thank you for helping me understand that more clearly. This, however, raises a further question - "Why limit?" The answer, again, can be found by asking you about your TAS. Why did you have to follow the rules of the game?
Not Omnipotent because I had to follow the rules of the game.
That is the important part, thank you for providing. Recall something I posited earlier. God will not override one's capacity to choose for themselves. Not cannot, but will not. If God is binding himself by even one condition, it follows that God is not Omnipotent within the scope of creation.
Thank you for helping me understand that more clearly. This, however, raises a further question - "Why limit?" The answer, again, can be found by asking you about your TAS. Why did you have to follow the rules of the game?
Because I was following the rules of the site. Because I wanted to. However, I did not create the rules. This is where the analogy breaks down.
God, presumably, created the rules of the universe. He could choose any set whatsoever. Are you claiming that the universe we currently reside in is the best possible universe that would not violate free will? If it is not, then how can you claim Omnibenevolence?
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Free will is an interesting matter. When one makes a decision, it's preferred to weigh in as many factors as possible, until new factors that one could ponder start making so little impact that they could be sacrificed. This is kind of when one's will to dig in ends. But before it ends, the more you consider, the better decisions you make. So all unbearable and good experiences of life are the means of figuring out a good decision.
And the only thing that can violate a free will is (ironically) someone's free will to violate others' free will. If one decides to break all the rules he can find, there's no rule that'd be at once suitable for rule obeyers and for such rule breakers. Because rule obeyers need more precision and fine tuning, which will cause greater damage if rule breaker touches it. And since they always co-exist in the same universe and in the same social groups, no rule can be perfect. Nor can a rule to not violate others' free will save us from those who want to break it.
So this is a moral decision. If one prefers his own pleasure so much he's ready to force others into suffering, he's lost to humanity. Now what about the other way? If one decides to experience unjust suffering from others or from circumstances (caused by others or not), what good can that provide? If done right, it provides constant overcoming, which is the only way to achieve something that was plain beyond one's capabilities.
Considering all that, I'd consider the current universe ideal for what people can achieve within it if they do it right.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Because I was following the rules of the site. Because I wanted to. However, I did not create the rules. This is where the analogy breaks down.
Let me ask you this. If you were the only person to ever create TASes, would you still follow rules that govern authenticity?
Dunno, maybe, maybe not. Authenticity was a large concern in the early days because of accusations of cheating, had Morimoto's SMB3 video not gone viral, perhaps it wouldn't be a bit concern.
Irrespective, I don't see what you're driving at.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Because there are two implicit assumptions you're making that you need to recognize you're making before my argument can make any degree of sense:
1) That a God consistent with what is commonly portrayed by Christianity must be Omnipotent AND Omniscient AND Omnibenevolent (you're hung up on the last one when it's demonstrable that the absence of the first can be the reason; arguments from my religion will follow)
2) That a God consistent with what is commonly portrayed by Christianity must be a singular, peerless entity. If He is a singular, peerless entity, then it only follows that there is no comprehensible reason for Him to bind Himself to certain rules.
For your consideration, I present two pieces of evidence from within my religion.
1) That God is not a singular, peerless entity. From a New Era article written in 1971, I present this:
Kent Nielsen wrote:
Such things make interesting reading for the unknowledgeable, but no Latter-day Saint need be left in doubt. There is nothing more fundamental in God’s revelations than the basic premise that we are of the race of Gods. We are of his species. God looks like us. We look like him. He has two arms, two legs, a head—indeed, Jesus said, “If ye have seen me, ye have seen the Father.” Obviously, God’s sons and daughters would be of his species, would resemble him. This was one of the basic truths Joseph Smith knew after his vision in 1820. Consequently, people on other worlds would be like us, because we are all his children.
If we are members of the same species as Heavenly Father, it only follows that He has peers with their own creations to care for. That He has peers allows for Him to have a need for His creation to follow rules governing authenticity.
2) That God is not, by definition, omnipotent. This is an easy one. You have already demonstrated that being governed by the authenticity rules prevented you from publishing a TAS in which you were omnipotent within the scope of the TAS. In LDS canon we read the following:
D&C 82:3 wrote:
I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.
If you ask me, that sounds like God follows certain rules. Remind me again, can you be Omnipotent if you're bound by certain rules, regardless of who binds you to them?
Because there are two implicit assumptions you're making that you need to recognize you're making before my argument can make any degree of sense:
1) That a God consistent with what is commonly portrayed by Christianity must be Omnipotent AND Omniscient AND Omnibenevolent (you're hung up on the last one when it's demonstrable that the absence of the first can be the reason; arguments from my religion will follow)
2) That a God consistent with what is commonly portrayed by Christianity must be a singular, peerless entity. If He is a singular, peerless entity, then it only follows that there is no comprehensible reason for Him to bind Himself to certain rules.
The first assumption was not implicit, considering I explicitly stated it. The reason why I explicitly stated it is so that if you had a problem with it you could explicitly correct me.
The second assumption is not one that is relevant to my argument, and was, in fact, not an assumption I made.
If you ask me, that sounds like God follows certain rules. Remind me again, can you be Omnipotent if you're bound by certain rules, regardless of who binds you to them?
So now you have a "Maximally potent" God. Irrespective, you still haven't established how it's possible that lack of cancer interferes with free will. Moreover, it seems absurd on its face to claim so.
There is nothing more fundamental in God’s revelations than the basic premise that we are of the race of Gods. We are of his species. God looks like us. We look like him. He has two arms, two legs, a head—indeed, Jesus said, “If ye have seen me, ye have seen the Father.” Obviously, God’s sons and daughters would be of his species, would resemble him.
So are you suggesting that members of God's species are susceptible to choking deaths, suffer from Scoliosis, have a recurrent laryngeal nerve that loops around his heart inefficiently, suffer and die in childbirth to a terrifying degree, develop cancer, and so on?
And moreover, that he directed evolution in such a manner to come up with us specifically to have all of these maladies to share with him?
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
