don't err on the side of tritheism, for god's sake
Before continuing, I have to repeat how embarrassed and frustrated I am that my blog is so bare and unloved-looking in terms of links, images and what not. I just know nothing of the technical side of things and can’t make sense of what I come across in blogger help. For example I note that a promising (if at time’s grammatically excruciating) new blog from WA, by one Kyan Gadac, has a para or two and then you click onto another page if you want to read more. Quiggin has this too of course, and I don’t know how the fuck it’s done. But that’s running, I can’t even crawl.
What I really need is some lovely blogging/net expert to take me through some paces personally. I note that another fave blogger of mine often asks for help in her blog, which is always improving its look, but then she’s much more beautiful than I am. It’s about time you veteran bloggers spared a thought and a few tips for us hapless paddlers, but presently I can’t even make contact.
At a place called Prosblogion, I find, as part of a counter-ontological argument, the premise that, if God exists he is the sort of thing than can be causally efficacious. But even if we accept this we’re only agreeing that this gendered god can cause things, not that he necessarily did, or must. In fact reading much of this stuff – an example (and remember, this is in a modern discussion around the ontological arg): ‘One way of thinking about the Trinity involves erring on the side of tritheism rather than erring on the side of modalism, at least as van Inwagen describes it.’ etc etc – quickly convinces me that much of it is about philosophers talking to each other and developing categories to trip others up and to avoid getting tripped up themselves. It takes us far far away from what I consider the real problem or problems and the way those problems tug at us. If I can try to look at that in the context of the ontological arg, I’d ask these questions. Does speaking about, formulating a statement about a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, really mean that we have any clear understanding about such a being, and if we assume that it does, can this really tell us anything whatever about the actual existence in the world of such a being? And what relation can this possibly have to necessary being?
It seems to me that when we conceive of any being we also conceive of limits to that being, otherwise there’d be no way to define the being, to distinguish it from what it isn’t. Yet when we conceive of a being that is limited, in terms of space, time, potency, whatever, we can’t be conceiving of a being than which no greater can be conceived, because we can always imagine some other being that goes beyond those limits, even if it itself is still limited. So in order to conceive of a being than which no greater can be conceived, we must surely conceive of this being as limitless, in space, in time, in power.
What I really need is some lovely blogging/net expert to take me through some paces personally. I note that another fave blogger of mine often asks for help in her blog, which is always improving its look, but then she’s much more beautiful than I am. It’s about time you veteran bloggers spared a thought and a few tips for us hapless paddlers, but presently I can’t even make contact.
At a place called Prosblogion, I find, as part of a counter-ontological argument, the premise that, if God exists he is the sort of thing than can be causally efficacious. But even if we accept this we’re only agreeing that this gendered god can cause things, not that he necessarily did, or must. In fact reading much of this stuff – an example (and remember, this is in a modern discussion around the ontological arg): ‘One way of thinking about the Trinity involves erring on the side of tritheism rather than erring on the side of modalism, at least as van Inwagen describes it.’ etc etc – quickly convinces me that much of it is about philosophers talking to each other and developing categories to trip others up and to avoid getting tripped up themselves. It takes us far far away from what I consider the real problem or problems and the way those problems tug at us. If I can try to look at that in the context of the ontological arg, I’d ask these questions. Does speaking about, formulating a statement about a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, really mean that we have any clear understanding about such a being, and if we assume that it does, can this really tell us anything whatever about the actual existence in the world of such a being? And what relation can this possibly have to necessary being?
It seems to me that when we conceive of any being we also conceive of limits to that being, otherwise there’d be no way to define the being, to distinguish it from what it isn’t. Yet when we conceive of a being that is limited, in terms of space, time, potency, whatever, we can’t be conceiving of a being than which no greater can be conceived, because we can always imagine some other being that goes beyond those limits, even if it itself is still limited. So in order to conceive of a being than which no greater can be conceived, we must surely conceive of this being as limitless, in space, in time, in power.
posted by Stewart at 3:42 pm
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