Originally posted by The Thinker
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You seem to be claiming both that you only ever have "good for", but that you don't have infinite regress. I can't see how you resolve that contradiction. So I'm trying to get you to illustrate it with an example.
You say that something is good because it minimizes suffering.
Me: According to you, the only way you can intelligibly describe "minimizing suffering" as good is to describe what it does. So what does it do?
You: "Minimizing suffering" is good because it does X.
Me: Only if X is good. And according to you, the only way you can intelligibly describe X as good is to describe what it does. So what does X do?
You: X is good because it does Y.
Me Only if Y is good. And according to you, the only way you can intelligibly describe Y as good is to describe what it does. So what does Y do?
And so on. How can that ever terminate, given your criterion? What is the/a concrete point in your theory where it terminates?
Originally posted by Joel
To your second point, there is no logical way out of the dilemma and you have not provided a counter example that avoids the dilemma.
And you haven't attempted to argue that Alston's theory runs into your dilemma. (And neither does Koons argue that.)
Each of those two theories appears to be a counter-example to your alleged dilemma. (And again, I'm not claiming that either theory is true, only that they seem to be counter-examples to your alleged dilemma.)
You've asserted that morality cannot or does not exist independently of god.
Originally posted by Joel
If god has X, that in no way implies that other things cannot also have X, and would still have X if god didn't have it, or if he didn't exist. You need to justify why that is not the case to have a point.
Originally posted by Joel
My view of course is that we don't need god for the universe to exist. So if there were two universes, one with a god, and one without it, and the worlds were exactly the same except those two differences, in the atheistic world, conclusion C would follow from premise P. In the theistic world it wouldn't, because nothing can exist independently of god.
So in the "theistic world", C does not follow from P.
So in the theistic world, the Christian does not fall into your dilemma. That is, in the theistic world, your dilemma doesn't exist.
It at most the dilemma exists in the atheistic world.
So then your insistence that your dilemma exists, is really just a conclusion depending on an underlying assumption that God doesn't exist.
For you to then try to use your dilemma in any attempt to prove that the atheistic world is actual, would be circular reasoning.
And any attempt to use your dilemma to say that the Christian runs into a dilemma in the theistic world would be entirely fallacious.
Originally posted by Joel
The meter bar analogy is problematic because we know the meter bar was made to fit the arbitrary length of a meter.
On the particularist analogy, it's not that we're saying that we strip the meter bar of all physical length, we're stripping it of meter-ness,
If he is good because of his characteristics, then those characteristics are good independently of god.
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