daniel1948 wrote:
Alexanderplatz wrote:
As a straight man I'd happily kiss Daniel48 for his writing above, well said that man. It's like watching God at work in his writing.
Thanks for your very kind words.
Bataar wrote:
So explain it. If something is perfect and it changes, it is therefore no longer perfect. If you disagree, explain how this can be possible. For something to change, that requires that the changed state is different from the original state. If the original state is perfect, then by the definition of change, the end result would not be perfect.
The fallacy in your argument is that the word "perfect" is undefined and undefinable. In certain contexts, the word has meaning. A perfect circle is clearly defined in plane geometry (though undefined in non-Euclidean geometry). But what constitutes a perfect chair? Two different people will consider two different chairs to be perfect. I used to have a cat. For me, the perfect easy chair was an old beat-up thing from the Goodwill that my cat could scratch to shreds. It was the perfect chair for me because I didn't have to try to convince the cat not to scratch it. It doubled as a chair and a scratching post, and when it was completely shredded I could haul it to the dump and buy another for just a few bucks. Maybe for you the perfect easy chair is a leather recliner with a vibrator built in. Or maybe your favorite chair is a rocker; but for me the perfect chair cannot rock because I get carsick in rocking chairs.
You get my point? When you assert that God is "perfect" you really aren't saying anything. Maybe the perfect god for you is an absolute monarch who sets all the rules, but for someone else the perfect god is a constitutional monarch who allows his subjects to make the rules.
And then there's the question, How do you know the Creator of the universe was perfect by any standards, or omnipotent or omniscient??? Creationists love the watchmaker analogy: They say a watch does not make itself, so there must be a Creator. But a watchmaker is not omnipotent or omniscient or even necessarily a good person. He's just a guy who knows how to make watches. How do you know the world was not made by a cosmic watchmaker who is flawed in all the ways people are flawed, and not omnipotent at all, but just a being who knows how to make worlds?
All arguments that depend on the concept of perfection are invalid, unless you can provide an adequate definition of "perfect."
On a totally different topic: Are Unitarian Universalists Christians?
Easy to answer: Some are and some are not. The UU has its roots in Christianity, but welcomes all faiths. The UU contains Christians, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Wiccans, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, and probably every other faith, spirituality, and non-faith. The UU has no dogma. Just a set of principles which boil down to "Respect people."
Christians, of course, are such a diverse group that a concise definition is tricky. Usually Christians believe that Jesus was God, that he died for our sins (a concept that I personally find perverse in the extreme) and that he rose on the third day and ascended to heaven. But there are variations. Very few Christians make any effort to live as he directed, though they believe he "saved" them.
This article provides a very good explanation of what "perfect" means in regards to God. I'll post some quotes and provide a link to the whole thing if you'd like to read it.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06612a.htmWhen we say that God is infinite, we mean that He is unlimited in every kind of perfection or that every conceivable perfection belongs to Him in the highest conceivable way. In a different sense we sometimes speak, for instance, of infinite time or space, meaning thereby time of such indefinite duration or space of such indefinite extension that we cannot assign any fixed limit to one or the other. Care should be taken not to confound these two essentially different meanings of the term. Time and space, being made up of parts in duration or extension, are essentially finite by comparison with God's infinity. Now we assert that God is infinitely perfect in the sense explained, and that His infinity is deducible from His self-existence. For a self-existent being, if limited at all, could be limited only by itself; to be limited by another would imply causal dependence on that other, which the very notion of self-existence excludes. But the self-existing cannot be conceived as limiting itself, in the sense of curtailing its perfection of being, without ceasing to be self-existing. Whatever it is, it is necessarily; its own essence is the sole reason or explanation of its existence, so that its manner of existence must be as unchangeable as its essence, and to suggest the possibility of an increase or diminution of perfection would be to suggest the absurdity of a changeable essence. It only remains, then, to say that whatever perfection is compatible with its essence is actually realized in a self-existing being; but as there is no conceivable perfection as such — that is, no expression of positive being as such — that is not compatible with the essence of the self-existent, it follows that the self-existent must be infinite in all perfection. For self-existence itself is absolute positive being and positive being cannot contradict, and cannot therefore limit, positive being.
In God "there is no change, nor shadow of alteration" (James 1:17); "They [i.e. "the works of thy hands"] shall perish, but thou shalt continue: and they shall all grow old as a garment. And as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the selfsame and thy years shall not fail" (Hebrews 1:10-12, Psalm 101:26-28. Cf. Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). These are some of the Scriptural texts which clearly teach Divine immutability or unchangeableness, and this attribute is likewise emphasized in church teaching, as by the Council of Nicaea against the Arians, who attributed mutability to the Logos (Denzinger, 54-old No. 18), and by the Vatican Council in its famous definition.
That the Divine nature is essentially immutable, or incapable of any internal change, is an obvious corollary from Divine infinity. Changeableness implies the capacity for increase or diminution of perfection, that is, it implies finiteness and imperfection. But God is infinitely perfect and is necessarily what He is. It is true that some attributes by which certain aspects of Divine perfection are described are hypothetical or relative, in the sense that they presuppose the contingent fact of creation: omnipresence, for example, presupposes the actual existence of spatial beings. But it is obvious that the mutability implied in this belongs to creatures, and not to the Creator; and it is a strange confusion of thought that has led some modern Theists — even professing Christians — to maintain that such attributes can be laid aside by God, and that the Logos in becoming incarnate actually did lay them aside, or at least ceased from their active exercise. But as creation itself did not affect the immutability of God, so neither did the incarnation of a Divine Person; whatever change was involved in either case took place solely in the created nature.
22 Mar 2015, 10:49 am
