So heaven is basically just like being hooked up to a pleasure machine? Or is Aquinas perhaps actually saying that the real heaven is the friends we didn't make along the way and the times we spent pointlessly writing worthless tracts and death is just oblivion but the real game is to help make the church a more powerful institution in the real world?Is buddhism really the only serious religion in the world?
>>24093941No, God is the good, and you will become one with the good in Heaven; you will become one with God. You will be all of the good and all of the good will flow through you. There will be no evil, no fear, no anxiety, no sadness, no old. Everything will inspire. everything will awe, everything will be new and anew. Remember when Jesus said to not forbid little children for of such is the kingdom of heaven? Little children are amazed by everything and everyone in heaven is amazed by everything
>>24093952Not all little children are amazed by everything. Also, this sounds half just like a hypothetical pleasure machine scenario and half like something that not even you know what actually means. Take for example "You will become one with God". Does that mean that I will be numerically identical to God? It would seem so since Aquinas says that our will will be forcefully aligned with god via God's mind control powers and all we will be is something akin to a vegetable strapped to a chair watching a lamp of pure beauty while never feeling anything at all except mind-numbing pleasure/happiness/goodness/love/whatever the specific christian fancies the most at a given moment. It seems, frankly, bizarre and not worth being taken seriously.
>>24093941Aquinas' sin was pride. Like every noteworthy theologian's and belligerent christian's
>>24093966We were made in the image of God, and God breathe life into us; we are the temple of God. Our soul belongs to God because we are of God. You are lost in darkness and imagine the good evil; so you recoil at the thought of goodness. The soul wills good, and the flesh wills sin. You imagine yourself as your body, the flesh; and not rather as you truly are, the spirit.
>>24093984uhh, you don't know anything about me. You are not even responding to anything I said. I am not imagining anything evil. I am just questioning Aquinas' view on heaven and comparing it to something base and worldly.Christianity is a very utilitarian religion, the only thing that matters is to get into the pleasure machine in the sky and to never ever ever suffer ever again. Also, what does it even mean to be made in "the image of god"?
>>24093994Suffering is evil. Having faith, hope and endurance is good. You are probably just admiring these qualities and not suffering. Being made in the image of God means you are made in the image of goodness. What you desire and need is goodness—you need God. It is what completes you, and in this way you become perfected.
>>24094023Why do I need God when all he will give me is a pleasure machine in the sky? Sure, I suppose he can also make me suffer eternally in Hell with increasing increments of despair every nanosecondBut all in all, I don't think you actually have a clue what you are talking about. You are specifically talking without thinking. You are repeating meaningless phrases and trained platitudes.Maybe suffering is not so evil. Maybe it is inherent to consciousness. Maybe hope and "endurance" are delusions borne from desires. Maybe God doesn't even exist. Maybe he's, in fact, a being of pure hate and still good. He is after all, not God because he is good (as understood by you) but good because he is God. That's how murder, rape, and all the things you associate with "evil" can be good if God does them, as he apperantly has done according to many western traditions. Maybe God is like the highschool bully. A sadist who gains pleasure in the suffering of others.
>>24094041You have no idea what you are talking about and offer no reasoning. Just maybes. You speak from your emotional baggage.
>>24094023God is not something he needs. Christianity is in rapid decline in Europe and it's mainly due to its own faults. Sure, you could say it's because people are just reverting to subhuman savegery and have become too stupid to realize the glory God, but they persist because Christianity is not equipped at all to tackle these oppositions. In the past, it could and did rely entirely on worldly political power to crush and kill any and all opposition. Now it can't rely on that. Not even evoking the fear of hell works anymore.
>>24094047At least I say something substantial. Other than you, who just repeats meaningless slogans like some Maoist.
>>24094061No, all you did was call good an illusion i.e. evil. Your eyes are shadows and darkness flows out of your mouth.
>The Blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven Will See the Punishments of the Damned So That Their Bliss May Be More Delightful to Them >t. Aquinas>>24093941pleasure at other people's suffering>>24093952you don't know what good is and stop appropriating Plato, you retarded jew
>>24094023>the image of GodHow do you reconcile this with evolution? Did God also evolve from hominids?
>>24094071>all you did was call good an illusion i.e. evil.No>Your eyes are shadows and darkness flows out of your mouth.Whatever helps you sleep, I guess.>>24094082He means the soul. God apperantly gave humans innate ideas of the good (himself) but somehow evil has returned.
>>24093941>Nozick introduced an experience machine thought experiment to support the idea that happiness requires pleasurable experiences that are “in contact with reality.” In this thought experiment, people can choose to plug into a machine that induces exclusively pleasurable experiences.If God made man to be in perfect union—Himself—perfect goodness—God but being indeed ultimate reality, then why by your own implication should we now consider such happiness arising from such union evil? When the sun delights the eye and magnifies the heart is that now evil? And the God we know is but the greater sun.
>>24094023There's no good weather without bad.
>>24094103>why by your own implication should we now consider such happiness arising from such union evil?where am I implying that we should?>When the sun delights the eye and magnifies the heart is that now evil?What the fuck are you babbling about? Maybe you should stop looking at the sun so much. It burns your retina and causes irreparable damage.
>>24094120>So heaven is basically just like being hooked up to a pleasure machine?
>>24094082That is a puerile understanding of the saying. Our spirit is made in the image of God. God has no form although He did come in likeness of man.>>24094074God makes his sun to shine on both the wicked and the righteous. The truth does not belong to Plato
>>24094124Oh, so it's like an endless concert where you also are constantly feeling nothing but some vague and nebulous "happiness"? Like a hippy commune?Also, what part of that is me saying that this is evil? Are you retarded?>>24094131God also tortures people on a bet.
>>24094124This is a prime example of how everything that comes out of the mouths of these christians is nothing but vague shadowplay. That and here we see an example of Augustine engaging in self-indulgence.
>>24094131That's Zeus you retard.
>>24094146No, God doesn't torture people. God gives and God takes away. God blesses and God withdraws His blessing. It is for upbuildling. You, however, lacking purpose seek a principle. That is your undoing.
>>24094146>Oh, so it's like an endless concert where you also are constantly feeling nothing but some vague and nebulous "happiness"? Like a hippy commune?If man was made to be in union with God, then all we can say with definition is that heaven will be marked by such a union. God has not revealed to us much more than that, but like Anon beautifully says >>24093952 we will be God's children, His sons and daughters. >No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”—the things God has prepared for those who love him—these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.And He will no longer hide His face from them. And in them this Father of ours will be seen. It will be INCREDIBLE.>Also, what part of that is me saying that this is evil? Are you retarded?I did say you had implied it, but you definitely seem to be making happiness to be some awful thing.
>>24094163I think you can definitely call that torture. Especially what he did to Job.> It is for upbuildling. You, however, lacking purpose seek a principle.What are you even talking about? Upbuilding for what? To be "stronger" in this world? But that doesn't matter at all in the afterlife. also, see this>>24094074The christian God is definitely sadistic, like his followers who mainly follow him in the hopes that it will bring them if not pleasure in this life at least pleasure in the next, at times.Also, do you think that the japanese christians should have allowed themselves to be tortured and killed or apostatized and just rejoice at the fact that they get to go to heaven early and thereby reinforcing the Nietzschean trope that Christianity is an anti-(this)life religion?
>>24094193>If man was made to be in union with GodWhy didn't he just do that in the first place instead of placing us all on here were many of us suffer while others, like yourself perhaps, live satisfying and pleasureable lives?>It will be INCREDIBLE.Or maybe not, maybe it will be terrible. The bible is pure fiction after all.> but you definitely seem to be making happiness to be some awful thing.No? Note that you have not explained what happiness even is in any way. I am just trying to understand the christian view on happiness and I think it can be boiled down to pleasure.
Christians literally can't reason
>>24094200You have to understand that Christians are genuinely retarded and don't know what they're talking about
>>24094200We've already said it. Happiness is union with God. Practically, it is willing what God wills. If God wills suffering, then that is happiness. If God wills a catastrophe, then that is also happiness—at least here on earth.
>>24094215>not happiness is happinessChristians genuinely can't reason
>>24094215> If God wills suffering, then that is happiness.Ok, so happiness is basically whatever god says it is. Does that mean that you are happy when you suffer some catastrophe? Or when you die and suffer eternally in heaven, which is like a void were every fiber of your being is in agony and you suffer from ever-increasing despair for infinity while god smiles eternally content over you? Sounds terrible. But I guess it does explain how hitting your wife is actually an act of love.
>>24094224"The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed. But it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved."
>>24094227Christians genuinely can't reason. Their religion requires contradictions and making up illogical shit
>>24094215Also, forgot to mention, but this means that happiness is virtually everything in existence. Or nothing. Or both.
>>24094236You're going to placed in a torture chamber where artificial intelligence keeps you alive and tortures you forever. You will never die and you will never escape it. This is going to happen in real life within the next few yearsTick tock
>>24094236They must have realized that, being animals, they don't have souls and therefore will never have eternal life.
Paul's third letter to the Corinthians:I who am about to diedwell with theewhom the Lord hath givetheternal lifeand the Lord giveth alleternal lifebut eternal life does not exitunfortunately.
>>24094236Also, this doesn't really make sense from a christian perspective since, in dying, you will go to heaven which is infinitely better than this dreary rock in space. So dying is actually preferrable and there is no need to prolong your suffering when paradise awaits.
>>24094227>Does that mean that you are happy when you suffer some catastrophe?Yes, because happiness is being in union with ultimate reality, regardless of feelings. Even then, you experience joy even while suffering when you accept it with a glad heart or offer it to God for the sake of some higher reason, like the salvation of a loved one. That is the mystery of the Cross.
>>24094251The moron literally said "happiness is not happiness if god says so"Christianity REQUIRES you to be schizophrenic and accept this type of fucking nonsense contradictions but the religion isn't real. Then when this was pointed out, the retard just stated blabbering verses from Corinthians and posted a meme about mice being tortured.Christians genuinely have been mind controlled by a demonic egregore that causes them to become pseudo schizophrenic walking contradictions who do but spread fear and irrationality. Thankfully the religion is dying and will never come back
>>24094267>Even then, you experience joy even while suffering when you accept it with a glad heart or offer it to God for the sake of some higher reasonWhy not just accept it like a stoic instead of "offering it to god", a phrase I'm sure not even you know the meaning of. We used to call this outlook "fatalism". Not "mystery of the cross" or somesuch nonsense. I guess it shows that there is nothing unique about christianity. I mean, you have even resorted to borrowing hindu terminology like "ultimate reality".
>>24094269>Then when this was pointed out, the retard just stated blabbering verses from CorinthiansThat was me. You should read that poem carefully.
>>24094267>Even then, you experience joyThen you aren't suffering>That is the mystery of the Cross.No, it's not a mystery. You're just making up nonsense contradictions.If you're full of joy, you are not suffering. If you're suffering, you aren't in
>>24094276It's nothing more than standard cult indoctrination. "The believers will totally know the truth but nonbelievers will say it's nonsense but the true believers will believe anyway".It's nothing more than an impotent threat in standard cult style. "You're going to die if you don't believe the nonsense were saying but the believes are heckin special and will be given prizes"
>>24094277It's basically the stoic and buddhist prescription. So not sure why he calls it "mystery of the cross", but the buddhists and stoics do stress that it is meant to be the best way to eliminate suffering and not that you should turn suffering into joy or something.
>>24094280Oh, I thought you were talking about this one>>24094258
>>24094281The Buddhists say by eliminating desire you will eliminate suffering.The other person is saying that suffering and joy are whatever God says they are. If God says that you burning in fire in pain is happiness and joy then that's that. It's not the Buddhist idea that suffering comes from desire.It's a contradiction. It's the type of thing that arises when you try to claim a single omnipotent being exists. You run into contradictions and you're forced into saying this type of nonsense.
>>24093941First thing you gotta understand is that the Christian afterlife is on earth, in a resurrected body.Augustine thought it would be a big Garden of Eden and we'd just frolic and shit. Thomas thought we would literally stand still in a giant theater watching God. He's following Aristotle here, a thing at rest is more perfect than a thing in motion.
>>24094287Yes, but there is also a part of buddhism where you accept reality as it is and it is tied to non-attachment. Because you suffer typically because of some attachment, which comes from an unwillingness to accept the circumstances and the world.
>>24094277>If you're full of joy, you are not suffering. If you're suffering, you aren't inIt is more accurate to say that without the higher reason, the suffering becomes intolerable. But with the reasons, it thus becomes joyful because we then reflect God's light as little Christs.
>>24094297There is absolutely no form of suffering on this earth that heaven can hire reason for.
>>24094297I mean, think about it. How does the bible justify sheer and crippling loneliness, natural disasters, birth defects, etc.? By forcing these people to just believe harder in God? But plenty of people live perfectly satisfying lives and many christians still believe they will go to heaven (which, again, is the sole goal of all christians, getting into the pleasure machine)
>>24094297If suffering for God is fine, then why do you want to go to the pleasure heaven instead of the painful hell if both make God equally happy?
There is no dopamine in heaven
>>24094197You know God didn't torture Job, right? It was Satan. God allows evil, I'll give you that, but you are being disingenous in saying that God Himself tortured Job. I am talking about spiritual upbuilding so that your spiritual building is not destroyed by the things of this world. So that you do not become attached to the things of this world and rather become attached to God, your helper. Do you acknowledge that God did not abandon Job but brought him salvation?
>>24093966>Aquinas says that our will will be forcefully aligned with god via God's mind control powers and all we will be is something akin to a vegetable strapped to a chair watching a lamp of pure beauty while never feeling anything at all except mind-numbing pleasure/happiness/goodness/love/whatever the specific christian fancies the most at a given moment. It seems, frankly, bizarre and not worth being taken seriously.It is frankly bizarre no doubt because your theory does not intersect with Aquinas's theology in any meaningful way.
After careful meditation of the most sublime sort I can only surmise there is nothing but sense organ affirmation here of the most base hylic sort. Even those few moments of gnosis here are just reiterating the senses used to read of these things which try so hard to impress themselves upon my mind. Begone foul daemons!
>>24094310Some forms of Christianity do deflate it into "avoiding the extrinsic punishment of Hell and gaining the extrinsic punishment of Heaven." This is, however, limited to small minority areas of Protestantism or what are considered the "simplistic errors of the laity."The Patristics, and many key Orthodox and Catholic saints argue against this view explicitly in great detail, and it only shows up in particularly shallow forms of fideism or more fundamentalist theology. It's also important to recall that fundamentalism is an extremely modern phenomena that is a small minority. It gets outsized attention because it is more common (although still a small minority) in contemporary America, but even moreso because it is essentially a real life strawman.What irks me is how people raised in secular households or in a single Christian tradition that they didn't even participate in very deeply growing up somehow thing they are thus, simply through osmosis, experts on 2,000 years of philosophy and theology spanning the globe. It's like some random Indian who grew up in a Hindu household claiming expertise on ALL of Buddhism from sheer osmosis. And so this leads to people backwards projecting modern fundamentalist American Protestantism backwards across millennia.Loving God because of what God does for you is one of St. Bernard's stages of love, but it is an immature and flawed one, not the destination.>>24094358Yes, I get the feeling that this poster has not read St. Thomas at all.>>24094269Divine command theory is a small minority position in Christianity, both today and throughout history. It is considered good theology in neither Catholicism nor in Orthodoxy, by far and away the largest churches.God is goodness itself. All goodness, even the goodness of what merely appears good, the relative, apparent good that leads us into concupiscence and sin, is still a reflection of divine goodness. This is why people like St. Augustine feel comfortable writing about God in extremely sensuous terms.The Euthyphro dilemma only resurfaces with the Reformation and late-medieval nominalism because now "Goodness" acts as a limit on divine sovereignty because God is somehow "less free" if God can only do what is good. Such a view is incoherent for Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St. Augustine, St. Maximus, St. Thomas, etc.If you want to understand this idea it's probably best to start with Plato. Wallace's Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present is a good start. Then look at Aristotle and WHY the unity by which anything is any thing at all is convertible with Goodness. Then the Patristics and medievals will make a lot more sense, although my suspicion is that you haven't read them at all.
>>24094269Or... perhaps you don't understand Christian philosophy. IDK, assumptions like "Dante was just a 'schizophrenic idiot," or St. Augustine and St. Thomas, widely considered to be among the greatest thinkers in Western history, couldn't recognize simple, obvious contradictions (and neither could Plotinus or Plato), might be unwarranted?
The thing you gotta understand with Christians is that most Christian don't actually want to go to heaven, they want to reincarnate as Christians and go to church forever. otherwise they wouldn't have kids like their priests or monks.the original point of Christianity was to transcend earth, Buddhism wasn't corrupted in that aspect unlike Christianity. Buddhist ignore all the rituals and laser focus on transcendence.
>>24094023>Suffering is evilSo why did Yahweh make a world filled with tremendous suffering?
>>24095215Or, you're coping trying to defend an incoherent worldview. Which is whats actually happening.
>>24093952Sounds boring
>>24095194Dualism is false, and humans have been proven to not have free will.These two basic facts completely destroy all of Christian theology. It doesn't matter if there's 2000 years or 2 hundred million years of theology; a single fact that undermines a basic premise completely disproves all of it.If you disagree, please explain why. Do so WITHOUR seething or posting memes or blabbering nonsense, in which case you might as well concede right now.
>>24095402NTA but the Holy Bible openly teaches predeterminism. This is why only Calvinism comes close to the truth. In fact every Christian knows the story of God hardening Pharaoh's heart, though they choose to ignore it>You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. (John 15:16)>No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:44)>Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. (Ephesians 1:4-5)>And all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. (Revelation 13:8)>The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel to see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come. (Revelation 17:8)>Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. (Matthew 25:34)
>>24095194>punishment of Heavenwhat
>>24095402>have been proven to not have free will.How is that? All that has been proven is that fools like Harris and Sapolsky feel entitled to write books about a subject while not even completing a basic undergraduate level of reading on it.>"Free will is le fake because freedom must mean uncaused action."Uncaused action would be for "no reason at all," and so arbitrary and random, which is sort of the exact opposite of free action. What most philosophers speak to with free will though is our capacity to be (relatively) more or less self-determination and self-governing. Such freedom has hardly been disproved, it's a foundational assumption for most of the social sciences. Self-determination isn't undetermined.>"B-but you did that because of your neurons."Our neurons are parts of us, parts organized around a self-governing, self-organizing, goal-directed whole.
>>24095442>How is that?No, the hodgkin Huxley equations have been applied to mammalian neurons.No, free will doesn't exist because we can literally scan your brain and know what you're going to say and think 8 seconds before you even know it. There's no way around this. It doesn't matter whatsoever what the "social sciences" say here.>Our neurons are parts of us, parts organized around a self-governing, self-organizing, goal-directed whole.Sorry, but this is blabbering nonsense and nothing but denial. Humans being affected by their environment does not imply that you have free will.We have objectively proven that you dont have free will. If you continue to deny this, you're just a coping pseud. If your philosophy is built on the existence of something that isn't real, then the philosophy is wrong. Your theology is wrong.Stop coping buddy. It doesn't matter that you have 2000 years of theological tradition. If it's wrong, it's still wrong. Also Jesus wasn't even a real historical figure, let alone God incarnate who came back from the dead.Stop wasting time with outdated ideas.
>>24095442Also, sapolsky is quite literally one of the leading neurobiologists on the planet with the more citations than most scientists. You rejecting his worse is just cope
>>24095452>No, free will doesn't exist because we can literally scan your brain and know what you're going to say and think 8 seconds before you even know it. There's no way around this. It doesn't matter whatsoever what the "social sciences" say here.No we cannot. We do not have magical mind reading technology that can tell what someone will say before they say it. 8 seconds would be fairly remarkable since people can respond to new stimuli and start utterances related to it in less than a second. I assume you are referring to Libet-type studies. These can be variously interpreted. The idea that they "disproved freewill" is a massive overreach. The idea that our conscious self-reflection and reasoning has NOTHING to do with behavior is sort of ridiculous. For one, if these NEVER affect behavior they can never have any affect on survival or reproduction, meaning natural selection would never select on how the world appears to us phenomenologically or how we reason, which in turn would mean that it can drift arbitrarily far from how the world is, removing all epistemic warrant for the empirical sciences in the first place. Plus, epiphenomenalism is forced to claim that consciousness is an entirely unique, sui generis phenomena, the only thing in the universe where causality flows in only one direction. It is just an ass pull to save mechanism, which some people are committee to as a religious dogma.> We have objectively proven that you dont have free will. If you continue to deny this, you're just a coping pseud. If your philosophy is built on the existence of something that isn't real, then the philosophy is wrong. Most specialists in this area are compatiblists, like 75%. No one well informed on the question thinks the answer is obvious.>Jesus wasn't even a real historical figureA fringe position even among atheist Biblical scholars and historians.
>>24095452>No, the hodgkin Huxley equations have been applied to mammalian neurons.Ok. You seem to think free will requires a commitment to something like substance dualism. A premise like: "if we use our bodies to think we cannot have free will," which is frankly a bizarre supposition because Cartesian dualism has never been popular and using a 400 year old theory that was ridiculed from the moment it was posited as your strawman is not going to be effective.
>>24095495>We do not have magical mind reading technology that can tell what someone will say before they say it.We literally do.>For one, if these NEVER affect behavior they can never have any affect on survival or reproduction, Having access to qualitative sensory information does not require nor imply free will. Causality by definition flows in one direction. A causes B and B is caused by A. A and B don't cause each other.>A fringe position even among atheist Biblical scholars and historians.Mythicism is becoming more popular now that boomer crypto Christians are dying off and leaving the field. There's no strong evidence for Jesus at all.>>24095499Yes, free will does require dualism. Not only that, but monist naturalism already rules out supernatural stuff like walking on water anyway.Derive a formal proof that monism implies that Christianity is true, or drop the nonsense
>>24095588>We literally do [have mind reading technology].It should be easy to post an example anon. Please do show us the neuroimaging techniques that let us know what someone will say (a whole 8 seconds) before they say it.
>>24093941>a pleasure machineNOZICK INTENSIFIES
>>24093941Christians have this idea of God's Goodness where Goodness has no relation to any human concept of goodness, forgiveness, or pleasure. The only thing we know is that it is Better than any terrestrial pleasure, but Better implies a comparison so its a circular definition. Heaven won't even be a pleasure machine, it will be a Goodness machine for whatever that is worth.
>>24096015>Christians have this idea of God's Goodness where Goodness has no relation to any human concept of goodness, forgiveness, or pleasureWhat is it with the topic of Christianity that convinces people that they clearly know what they are talking about despite obviously not even having a rudimentary idea of it?The equivocal usage of Goodness you are describing is something that only shows up in Reformation era Protestant theology. If you when bothered to skim the relevant question of ST you'd see St. Thomas clearly stating that all goodness, even what merely appears good, is related to God's goodness. Good is predicated analogously.https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1006.htm#article4This is the basics of the Doctrine of Transcendentals and the Analogia Entis, which remains Catholic theology to this day (and so the theology of most Christians). Orthodoxy has a similar view, with goodness being predicated analogously of creatures and God. All goodness is a reflection of the divine goodness.It is the *predication* or goodness, not the goodness itself that is analogical as well. There are not different, sui generis sorts of goodness. So, something like Hume's guillotine makes absolutely no sense in an Aristotelian or Thomistic framework, or in the Patristic frame endorsed by the Orthodox.The idea that God's goodness is some sort of totally equivocal goodness that fallen reason cannot comprehend is something you see in Luther, but it's one of the reasons Luther was condemned as a heretic. It's the univocity of being and the idea of God as just "one being among many," infinite being sitting on a Porphyrian tree alongside finite being, that makes folks like Luther and Calvin take this line, because they are now worried that God's goodness is a constraint on God's freedom.St. Augustine would have seen this as incoherent. He thought the perfected soul in Heaven couldn't sin. This isn't a limit on freedom for the same reason that an inability to trip and fall isn't a limit on our freedom to walk. If you believe there are facts about what is truly best then it simply never makes sense to choose the worse over the better. You only choose the worse if you are ignorant about what is truly best, face external constraints, or suffer from weakness of will, all of which are obvious LIMITS on freedom.This isn't just in Christian thought, you can find it in Plotinus and even, less fleshed out, in Aristotle.The idea that what is "good for me," is totally distinct from a different sort of "moral good" is what makes modern ethics incoherent. Alasdair MacIntyre and D.C. Schindler are pretty good on this.
>>24096015And here specifically is where Aquinas says the exact opposite of what you're saying "Christians say.">Everything is therefore called good from the divine goodness, as from the first exemplary, effective, and final principle of all goodness. Nevertheless, everything is called good by reason of the similitude of the divine goodness belonging to it, which is formally its own goodness, whereby it is denominated good. And so of all things there is one goodness, and yet many goodnesses.This isn't unique to him. You can find it in St. Augustine or St. Maximus. You can find it in the Islamic philosophers as well, and in Pagans.The idea of an unrelated multiplicity of Goods is a modern notion. It comes in through the Reformation but is very strong in modern atheism. It's one of the reasons that sectarian critics, like to claim that mainstream atheistic scientist is essentially a Protestant religion.I think this is a little much, but they have a bit of a point. The whole anthropomorphic language of everything "obeying" inscrutable "natural laws," that "just are, for no fathomable reason at all," is literally just voluntarist Protestant theology with God chopped off. The language of law and obedience hasn't even been changed. Likewise, the Nietzschean strain in atheism is just voluntarist theology with man subbed in for God as the sui generis, magical source of all value (and for the descendents of Kant, all intelligibility) in the world. It's a weird mix of the aggrandizement of man (we "create" all value and even mathematics, essences, etc.) and his total abasement (man is just a mechanistic machine, a heap of particles bouncing off each other).
>>24093984>We were made in the image of GodAt what point in evolution did this happen?
Life is difficult for humans. Humans should at least stick up together
>>24096124>The equivocal usage of Goodness you are describing is something that only shows up in Reformation era Protestant theologyI come across the "protestant" definition of goodness in terms of the problem of suffering, i.e. "'God is good' and 'the child dies an arbitrarily needless and painful death' are compatible because we just don't understand what is good". Using Aquinas' definition the "mysterious ways" argument doesn't apply, I believe his position is something like "God can't directly intervene with mortal affairs as that negates peoples free will". Except that is an even worse argument.
