• Bartricks
    6k
    Is the meaning of the word Jeffery 'someone who has red hair' or is it just the name of someone who happens to have red hair but would still be Jeffery if they didn't?

    God is shorthand for 'a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent' such that if you have those qualities you are God. It's like Dr. If you have a PhD, you are a dr.
  • khaled
    3.5k
    I was trying the Bartricks thing where you purposely give the least charitable interpretation so that you can make a counter argument. So I interpreted God to be the name of someone who happens to be O,O and O who would still be God without those properties, as the way you phrased it allows for that clearly unintended interpretation. Then I made a parody of your argument to “show” that it doesn’t make sense. I don’t see what you find so satisfying about doing this all day.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    I don't give uncharitable interpretations of other people's arguments. Indeed, rarely does anyone here give any arguments. But whatever floats your boat.
  • Cuthbert
    1.1k
    I don’t see what you find so satisfying about doing this all day.khaled

    *That* is the mystery of mysteries.
  • Alkis Piskas
    2.1k

    What "God"? Christian? Hindu? Islamic? A personal "God" ... or any other imagined, constructed "God"?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    There's no mystery. Discussing philosophical ideas with the confident but ignorant can be very fruitful. It's what Socrates did. Mark Twain said not to argue with a stupid person as they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with their experience. But he was quite wrong. They will not beat you, they will just think they have (that's almost inevitable - how would they realize they've been bested?). And in the meantime one's mind has had a good workout, for an ignorant person will misunderstand just about everything. And in seeking to explain what one never thought could be misunderstood, one may chance upon things.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    God with a capital G denotes a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. So his/her question is about whether free will is something a person like that could possess.
    And the answer is obvious: yes, for an omnipotent being is unconstrained and thus nothing they do will be unfree unless they choose to make it so.
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    I've read Descartes's Replies and as I showed, he says God is necessary. He said "always exists" and "necessary". That why the ontological argument works for him. What you are referring to is that he says God's Fiat makes something God instead of something being good because it is so. That's a overly subtle scholastic point that has nothing to do with your relativism
  • Bartricks
    6k
    You've read the fifth and sixth replies and his letter to Mersenne from 1630? And you still think I am wrong? Odd. He expresses precisely my view. But then I don't think you understand Descartes. He did think most who read him wouldn't. I agree.
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    You don't know how his two arguments for God work together
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    Provide the quotes from Descartes that God has no nature and can destroy himself. He said God is necessary
  • Bartricks
    6k
    What? Focus. He - Descartes - believed God could do anything. He didn't think we could comprehend that, but he thought it was true nonetheless. No rule binds God, for they are all in his gift. It's simple. And when you read the meditations you read them as if he's describing what's true, when in fact he's describing his thought processes (which develop, of course).
  • Bartricks
    6k
    What? Why would God have no nature? This is the problem with you - you don't know what's equivalent to what.
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    Every theist believes God can do anything. Destroying himself is not something
  • Bartricks
    6k
    No they don't. And yes it is.
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    A necessary being can't die by definition
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    You are really incapable of understanding the answer to the rock paradox? I figured that out when I was a kid
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    You're an atheist plain and simple
  • Bartricks
    6k
    You are not a subtle thinker. Descartes thinks his own existence is 'necessary' in that he cannot conceive of not existing; but he does not thereby think himself incapable of dying. So you have to read that word 'necessarily' as telling us about what Descartes can conceive of, not of what is or is not metaphysically possible.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    I am not an atheist. You understand me no better than you understand Descartes. I am about as theist as it is possible to be. I am more theist than most contemporary theists who seem not to have spent adequate time reflecting on the nature of omnipotence and what it takes to have it.
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    Descartes ontological argument works for him only when God if necessary
  • Bartricks
    6k
    No, you don't understand Descartes' ontological argument, clearly, and have conflated it with Anselm's. My advice: don't label it. Just read it.
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    It's the same as Anselm's
  • Gregory
    4.6k
    Descartes says that existence is necessary to God therefore God exists
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    Than state how it's unique
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Why? It's off topic and it'd be like showing a Durer etching to my cat.
    This thread is about God and free will, not the finer details of Descartes' case for God.
  • Gregory
    4.6k


    Descartes said it was different from Anselm's but it's exactly the same. Necessary being must exist by definition. Ergo, God exists
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