The Black Vault

You're just changing the meaning of words now, that won't fly.

The "great" in "maximal greatness" has never meant maximal goodness, or implied an inability to commit evil acts. You say God is the totality of all that exists. Well, evil exists, so God has evil within his nature by necessity.

If that is the case, and greatness is merely goodness, a maximally great God would not encompass anything evil, and therefore a maximally great being cannot be the totality of everything that exists, that includes evil and unjustice.

Do you see that? By changing the meaning of the word you have made your case even weaker.

DIss0n80r wrote:The point Hum made, as I see it, is that a deity cannot be defined as equivalent solely to all that we call virtuous without effectively being limited and thus not God.

You are playing a word game as usual.

God is not defined as solely equivalent to our definitions of virtuousness.

God defines what is virtuous.

Your new argument fails thusly.

1. God is defined as "the totality of existence"
2. Maximal greatness is actually maximal goodness
3. A maximally good God would have no evil within him
4. Evil exists
5. A maximally good God cannot comprise "the totality of existence" if evil exists

This is a good example of why it's a waste of time to try to reason with people who hold strong irrational beliefs. Such people will only employ logic and reason insofar as that superficially bolsters their beliefs; but as soon as belief is contradicted by logic, guess which one they abandon?

It's the easiest thing in the world to claim you cannot be wrong because your God defines everything.

Zeus is probably making us all believe he isn't the one true God. It's all part of his divine plan. You can't disprove that he and the easter bunny are conspiring against you.

humphreys wrote:You're just changing the meaning of words now, that won't fly.

The "great" in "maximal greatness" has never meant maximal goodness, or implied an inability to commit evil acts. You say God is the totality of all that exists. Well, evil exists, so God has evil within his nature by necessity.

If that is the case, and greatness is merely goodness, a maximally great God would not encompass anything evil, and therefore a maximally great being cannot be the totality of everything that exists, that includes evil and unjustice.

Do you see that? By changing the meaning of the word you have made your case even weaker.

Greatness is not merely goodness. Your argument is a very simple beginner atheist argument that is getting old fast

Greatness entails that which is great, however you wish to define "great".

God is maximally great and God does not perform actions which are not great.

Humans perform "evil" acts, however you wish to define evil. We can say evil is not-great. Free will exists so humans will perform non-great acts... that is inevitable. so God encompasses the humans which perform non-great acts.

There is no contradiction or limitation on the omnipotence of God.

DIss0n80r wrote:This is a good example of why it's a waste of time to try to reason with people who hold strong irrational beliefs.

Like your particular irrational belief that square circles can exist ...OK...

At this stage it seems we are sorely lacking a proper definition of "greatness" from your side, because it clearly is not maximal goodness, and it clearly is not maximal power/ability, so...what is it?

Which is greater, a God who is limited in power, or a God who is limited in perfect morality?

You are the one playing the word games here. You seem to want to use "greatness" in a number of different ways whichever you decide suits your argument best at any particular moment.

Equivocation much?

khanster wrote:

DIss0n80r wrote:This is a good example of why it's a waste of time to try to reason with people who hold strong irrational beliefs.

Like your particular irrational belief that square circles can exist ...OK...

I don't believe in square circles. Nor do I disbelieve in the possibility of non-euclidean mathematical objects which might appear as such to us.

But that is an attempted red herring on your part to attempt to distract from the debate you are losing in THIS thread. Do you have anything other than irrelevancies in your bag of tricks?

khanster wrote:God is maximally great and God does not perform actions which are not great.

No no, he cannot, because he is not maximally powerful. Maximal power and maximal goodness are not compatible.

I am defining greatness in the sense of "maximal greatness" being an all inclusive property.

Greatness does not need to be exhaustively defined to exact detail with all the infinite nuances elaborated.

Some define maximal greatness as being the property of having maximal excellence in every possible world.

Maximal excellence entails omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and moral perfection.

Your argument is that omnipotence is incompatible with God restricting his own actions to that which is morally perfect. You say that this creates a contradiction. correct me if I am wrong

I say that there is no contradiction. Omnipotence and moral perfection are compatible due to the existence of free will of the non-great beings within the created world/universe.