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Similitude
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| Posted 1/13/2007 11:52 AM (GMT -6) |   | Exousia: When I talk about God being "adversarial", I'm talking about God having a perspective of reality where he EMOTIONALLY believes that things in Creation can "oppose" him (either directly or indirectly),
Jeff: I don't know what it means to "EMOTIONALLY" believe. To resist/oppose is to decrease one's sentient satisfaction. If I resist a child molestor, I DECREASE his sentient satisfaction. Why is this problematic? The temporary decrease in sentient satisfaction to the molestor has the potential to decrease epistemic distance to the truth for him. It will decrease the suffering to the victim. If there is an emotional ground for the impulse that is intelligently directed to such resistance, how is this malevolent?
Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/13/2007 11:10:28 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 1/13/2007 12:10 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Previously Tom (because E asks about it): Anyhow, all I mean by “emotionally opposed to” is a negative emotion, a sense or feeling of displeasure that’s set within a perspective on its cause and purposes relevant to God’s purposes possible courses of action.
Tom now: Typos messed it up. I oppose that! Let me now act…
…all I mean by “emotionally opposed to” is a negative emotion, a sense or feeling of displeasure, that’s set within a perspective that (a) apprehends the cause and purposes of the source of the displeasure and (b) relates these to God’s purposes and possible courses of action.
Then E asks about this…
Exousia: Are you just saying that God's experienced negative emotions contribute meaningfully to God's activity with the world?
Tom: If "meaningfully" means they contribute to defining the motivation and purposes of God’s activity in the world, yes.
Exousia: It is possible for B have a negative feeling associated with the perception of A's attempt. It is possible for Person B to be motivated to action by the attempt to decrease one's sentient satisfaction.
Tom: But…?
Exousia: But...it is ALSO possible for Person B have a perspective such that nothing above is interpreted as an OPPOSITION TO BE RESISTED…
Tom: Doesn’t compute. To me this last part you think is impossible is essentially equivalent to, or entailed by, what you concede. If A's misrelating evokes negative emotions in B with respect to A’s behavior, and if B loves A, then B will, in love, oppose A (viz., oppose A's behavior, not A "as a person"). This opposition (though true opposition) is designed in A’s best interest. It’s a necessary part of B’s loving A. Thus, opposition itself (cut off from context, purpose, and all else; just the notion) cannot be the fundamental explanation of B’s actions.
Exousia: …such that there is a TARGET that is emotionally opposed. In other words, Person B does not have to "return" oppositional feeling just because she's the recepient of oppositional feeling and intention. That's what I'm saying.
Tom: Again, this is where you’re confusing me. You keep talking as if there can only be ONE explanation of God’s actions. I’m not saying God “returns” negative feelings JUST (I seem to feel this is part of what you mean) because people aim their angst at God. Not at all. If God feels disgust, God gets this from his perception of loss with respect to the failure of his loving subjective aims for a person. No negative emotion in God is ever so isolated that it can constitute its own “because” that explains God’s actions. That would make God “retaliatory.”
--------------------------
Jeff: And the way I understand emotional experience, feelings are not returned. They are only felt.
Tom: Yeah, but all D means is that the feelings we evoke in God are God's "response" to us. That's the "return" he means.
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 1/13/2007 11:14:02 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 1/13/2007 12:17 PM (GMT -6) | | Exousia: …such that there is a TARGET that is emotionally opposed. In other words, Person B does not have to "return" oppositional feeling just because she's the recepient of oppositional feeling and intention. That's what I'm saying.
Tom: Again, this is where you’re confusing me. You keep talking as if there can only be ONE explanation of God’s actions. I’m not saying God “returns” negative feelings JUST (I seem to feel this is part of what you mean) because people aim their angst at God. Not at all. If God feels disgust, God gets this from his perception of loss with respect to the failure of his loving subjective aims for a person. No negative emotion in God is ever so isolated that it can constitute its own “because” that explains God’s actions. That would make God “retaliatory.”
Jeff: This gets back to what I've said before. I see no reason why God would ever choose to feel a negative feeling, except as a means to a higher good. God feels negative feelings passively, under certain conditions, just like we do. Otherwise, I have no idea how to account for his self-disposition. SO the question I would have is, why would He choose to feel negatively for any reason other than to accomplish a higher good? I see contingency planning, e.g., as a possible case where God might feel negative feelings. But He doesn't contingency plan for the purpose of feeling negative feelings. There is a good to be attained by the planning that renders the negative feelings, worth it.
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Tom
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| Posted 1/13/2007 12:31 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: This gets back to what I've said before. I see no reason why God would ever choose to feel a negative feeling, except as a means to a higher good.
Tom: Right. I'm just assuming the higher good is a natural subjective aim an all-loving God would have for any contingent sentient creation, and that God then naturally responds emotionally. I don't think God chooses to feel negatively as if, given creation and God's purposes for it, God could choose not to. Once God creates unders certain conditions, his emotional responses are not libertarian choices.
Jeff: God feels negative feelings passively, under certain conditions, just like we do. Otherwise, I have no idea how to account for his self-disposition. SO the question I would have is, why would He choose to feel negatively for any reason other than to accomplish a higher good?
Tom: Right. E's point is, show me a higher good God cannot accomplish WITHOUT feeling negatively (or more precisely, WHILE feeling negatively about some misrelation but WITHOUT relating this negative emotion to his actions as a motivation for acting in oppositional ways). God doesn't intend to oppose. He just intends to right related. Any opposition is a kind of mechanical effect that follows without needing to be specifically intended by God.
Exousia wants all talk of "opposition" to be a kind of abstraction we arrive at by thinking on events AND he wants opposition to be a secondary effect that follows automatically from God's intending to do nothing more than good.
I'm just aiming here. Not sure I'm hitting anything!
But in my view, opposition IS good, given the right ingredients. In other words, I don't see the problem that needs to be avoided which D sees. I'm sure I'll get it eventually.
Tom
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Similitude
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| Posted 1/13/2007 12:34 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/13/2007 12:55 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Exousia wants all talk of "opposition" to be a kind of abstraction we arrive at by thinking on events AND he wants opposition to be a secondary effect that follows automatically from God's intending to do nothing more than good.
For the record, Tom, this is accurate.
You feel "opposition" is good. I do not.
I believe that God ONLY works by POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT and has the emotionality grounding that. God LURES Creation into the direction of right-relatedness.
I believe that is it a FALSEHOOD that NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT (and the negative emotionality behind it) works. God doesn't OPPOSE things to make them better.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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Similitude
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| Posted 1/13/2007 1:13 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: I don't think God chooses to feel negatively as if, given creation and God's purposes for it, God could choose not to. Once God creates unders certain conditions, his emotional responses are not libertarian choices.
Jeff: Sorry, I was responding more to D.'s language of "returning" oppositional feeling. That sounds volitional to me. I don't see God volitionally experiencing negative feelings except when it's "worth it." Which is to say it is conducive to some higher good. In this sense, the same is true of disgust as for anger. No difference.
Jeff: God feels negative feelings passively, under certain conditions, just like we do. Otherwise, I have no idea how to account for his self-disposition. SO the question I would have is, why would He choose to feel negatively for any reason other than to accomplish a higher good?
Tom: Right. E's point is, show me a higher good God cannot accomplish WITHOUT feeling negatively (or more precisely, WHILE feeling negatively about some misrelation but WITHOUT relating this negative emotion to his actions as a motivation for acting in oppositional ways).
Jeff: If this is the case, I don't know how He is self-disposing. I do think I understand one thing about D.'s argument, though. Whereas we can cease certain displeasures without, simultaneously, originating pleasure, God can not. Insomuch as the source of all of God's displeasure is misrelating, the cessation of said misrelation necessarily produces pleasure for God--except in the case where misrelating is ceased by death. For death may be a state of zero relating if it is a state of non-sentience (as I believe it is).
But for this distinction to be of great significance to the subject at hand, we have to assume that there is something other than resistance that God can do in the here and now that will remedy all misrelation. Let's suppose, e.g., that God really did imprison fallen angels in the past or that He truly restrains Satan from all of his designs. Can God really make the situation better by doing something other than restraint? If so, what is it? I think we need to explain the alternative. I can't think of one. Would God's intents be better served by letting Satan do anything he wants? How could we know this?
One other thing. I think God desires to resist sins of ignorance, too. I suspect that transgression is associated with an impulse/desire that is more intense. Moreover, sins of ignorance may evoke empathy in God for the sinning one. I don't see how God can be empathetic to conscience sinning, though. All these relations evoke their corresponding relational feelings to my mind. God apprehends them all, all the time. We focus on very few or only one at a time.
As I'm understanding the conversation, these issues are being discussed:
1) Ought we to parsimoniously reduce God's emotional repertoire to only those emotions that can account for positive action? Might this eliminate the need for disgust, even?
2) Can a merely aesthetic deity ground the kind of relational emotions we feel in our relationship with Him? Or do we have to suppose that He is empathetic with our personal/social feelings to sustain our own social affections towards Him? For me, personally, I think I would feel less than relational with God if I came to fully accept that He only feels aesthetic feelings towards me. And this causes me to approach 1) differently than D. Divine empathy is just too important in my epistemology of philosophical theology.
3) A possibly related question is: Can the atonement be understood in terms of a God that doesn't forgive? Do we need to posit a truly effectual atonement at all? If not, how do we explain it?
And all I'm trying to do is argue that my philosophical theology doesn't entail an abandonment of divine love. Other philosophical theologies can explain things differently. This has always been my contention--without scripture, there will still be multiple philosophical accounts of reality. And we have to live with that, in tolerance. There will not be one account that will cause all to go, "Yeah, that's the ticket!"
Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/13/2007 12:28:51 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 1/13/2007 1:52 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Exousia: You feel "opposition" is good. I do not.
I believe that God ONLY works by POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT and has the emotionality grounding that. God LURES Creation into the direction of right-relatedness.
I believe that is it a FALSEHOOD that NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT (and the negative emotionality behind it) works. God doesn't OPPOSE things to make them better.
Jeff: I think this is a good contribution to the discussion. I don't see how negative reinforcement even enters into the picture. To my mind, when God is trying to stop the displeasure of anger, He does not desire to restrain/oppose/resist for the purpose of positively affecting the offender (or negatively affecting the offender, either)--though it has the potential to do so. It is a desire that is intelligently aimed at how to stop the anger He is experiencing. The action that can stop that one negative feeling from continuing is restraint/resistance of the activity that is causing the anger. Supposing God really restrained angels in the past, I don't see why He would be angry at them anymore, except possibly for any thoughts they continue to volitionally think against His sentient satisfaction.
But restraint/opposition/resistance, per se, is not negative reinforcement, to my mind. Negative reinforcement is the application of displeasure for the purpose of behavior modification. Restraining angels is not for behavior modification; it is for behavior prevention. I'm thinking that all action motivated by God's anger is just that, too--action that prevents the specific misrelation that causes the anger. But God forebears most of it, anyway, rather than act upon the source of the misrelation. So when God forebears, negative reinforcement is certainly not an issue.
Furthermore, I would definitely say that different personalities respond differently to reinforcement. I think some personalities may be predominantly influenced by positive reinforcement, whereas other personalities may be predominantly motivated by negative reinforcement. As an amiable who is motivated by acceptance, I am motivated by negative reinforcement. I naturally act to avoid rejection. I see both kinds of reinforcement as having value in their appropriate contexts. It's all about context and perspective.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/13/2007 1:13:11 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/13/2007 3:25 PM (GMT -6) | | Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
"Love bears all things."
"Love your enemies."
Could the reason "love" does this...be because love realizes that that it is the most powerful force in Reality?
So, love doesn't CONCERN itself with itself.
It ONLY thinks about building up others, knowing that it will be ok and taken care of.
It is UNCONDITIONAL and OUTWARDLY LOOKING.
So, it doesn't try to emotionally react in order to do something FOR ITSELF...so that it can feel better.
Love doesn't try to eliminate misrelation for ITS OWN SAKE, but for the sake of others.
Love eliminates misrelation by PROMOTING right-relatedness for others.
Love is NOT self-seeking!
So, love doesn't try to minimize evil SO THAT it can begin to feel less displeasure.
Love is FREE and doesnt HAVE to worry about that.
Love will bear what it needs to bear to be IN RELATIONSHIP with it's Beloved.
(This was the choice God made when he made to create!)
Love does what it can to maximize good for it's beloved, knowing that this will inherently decrease God's displeasure.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Love may be TOUGH, meaning causing pain, disillusionment, restraint, etc.
But for those who love the Lord, for those who understand the NATURE of Love, Love works IN ALL THINGS for the good.
I don't see Love "opposing" or being adversarial to anything.
I just don't see it.
I USED TO...I really did...
But I don't anymore.
I guess that's just where I am.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/13/2007 2:31:46 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 1/13/2007 3:33 PM (GMT -6) | |
TGB said...
Exousia: I believe that God ONLY works by POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT and has the emotionality grounding that. God LURES Creation into the direction of right-relatedness.
Tom: This looks like a wholesale adoption of the process view of divine power. Is that right? I mean, you once diagreed with this because you insisted on God's freedom to kick the furniture over so to speak. God sends a flood to start the project over, God has the ground open to swallow the rebellious, God rains judgment down on Sodom, Jesus curses the fig tree, the Spirit strikes Anninias down dead in front of the emerging church, and on and on. These certainly look like actions taken to directly oppose certain states even if they're subsumed by God loving intentions.
I'm disqualified by not having read everything. But I listen to Tom and Jeff. While one MIGHT find SIMILARITIES with Process... Biblical revelation and Holy Tradition trump philosophy.
Why do I say "holy tradition" when it is not always a welcomed notion? Well, its not an abstraction. Tradition is peopled with real dudes with real notions: like John of Damascus, etc. These dudes were willing to deal within boundaries of what was knowable while also handling the limits of what was not. The fruit of that is that everything that was needful was addressed.
By contrast, philosophy only introduces notions that "follow" from one to another.
The Geneva Bible says poetically, "At sundry times and in diverse manners God spake in the old time..." And while other translations have a different orientation, what those words suggest is to betray that revelation is not even, nor of homogeneous emphasis. Messy, all over tha place, revelation is. But it all works together according to hidden undergirding shape. And all has at its nurishing root the economy of Christ. Wesley translated "...in these last days spoken to us by his Son..."
Would teleos by any other name smell as sweet?
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 1/13/2007 3:37 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 1/13/2007 4:18 PM (GMT -6) | | | Exousia: So, love doesn't CONCERN itself with itself.
Jeff: Love has not "care," IOW. I agree. Because love prevails and knows it will.
Exousia: It is UNCONDITIONAL and OUTWARDLY LOOKING.
Jeff: I'm still not seeing how the atonement fits in if there are zero conditions for love's expression.
Exousia: So, it doesn't try to emotionally react in order to do something FOR ITSELF...so that it can feel better.
Jeff: Right. Love doesn't intentionally ("try to") feel negative feelings for itself. Love is always acting in its own behalf BY acting for others. I.e., Love takes PLEASURE in the PLEASURE of others. But Love can not be self-disposing, to my mind, if it experiences no PLEASURE or DISPLEASURE. Nor can it be motivated without contemplating the pleasure it will receive from its actions. I don't know what motivation is, even, apart from the contemplation/anticipation of the pleasure or decrease in displeasure an action will accomplish. An omniscient person could not be ignorant of it.
Exousia: Love doesn't try to eliminate misrelation for ITS OWN SAKE, but for the sake of others.
Jeff: I say both, in the sense I described above. Love gains pleasure by giving pleasure.
Exousia: Love eliminates misrelation by PROMOTING right-relatedness for others.
Jeff: How is God doing this, D? For that matter, how does process say He does it? I've never understood this, and still don't? As I see it, God intervenes in revelatory ways in history. God can't promote anything apart from how He appeals to our intellect. So how does process say He's promoting right-relatedness in me?
Exousia: Love is NOT self-seeking!
So, love doesn't try to minimize evil SO THAT it can begin to feel less displeasure.
Jeff: Again, I say it's both. God is satisfied by satisfying others. God is not merely seeking His own at any time, because He is essentially relational.
Exousia: Love is FREE and doesnt HAVE to worry about that.
Jeff: Again, I would say this is true ONLY because Love is perfectly competent and can always accomplish His own ends. This is why we can attain to perfect love. Because God supplies us with sufficient competence to do just that.
Exousia: Love will bear what it needs to bear to be IN RELATIONSHIP with it's Beloved.
(This was the choice God made when he made to create!)
Jeff: Yes, it will, to attain it's ends. If there are no ends in creation, then this can be explained differently. But I don't see how we can say there are no ends in creation if God is essentially relational. Creation must be for someone other then Himself. I say that's Christ.
Exousia: Love does what it can to maximize good for it's beloved, knowing that this will inherently decrease God's displeasure.
Jeff: YYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is called MOTIVATION, in my way of thinking.
Exousia: I don't see Love "opposing" or being adversarial to anything.
Jeff: I agree, if by "anything," you mean any BEING. But it can oppose actions of beings, which will be interpreted by some of those beings as opposition to their own well-being.
The bottom line is: God is a person. To speak of God as love can not justify us thinking of Him as less than a knowing, sentient, volitional being that we define as a person. Thus, whatever we say about Love as an ACTOR, it must entail all the essential attributes of PERSONHOOD. If you think a person can act volitionally without sentient motivation, or if you think love is non-volitional, then you define person or love differently than I do, and this is a fundamental source of disagreement. This would explain much more clearly why we are at an impasse.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/13/2007 3:28:47 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/13/2007 4:29 PM (GMT -6) | | Ok. Maybe we are CLOSE here. We seem to be.
Jeff:
Love takes PLEASURE in the PLEASURE of others.
Completely agreed. Always.
*******************
Exousia: I don't see Love "opposing" or being adversarial to anything.
Jeff: I agree, if by "anything," you mean any BEING. But it can oppose actions of beings, which will be interpreted by some of those beings as opposition to their own well-being.
If you mean by "oppose actions of being" the SAME THINGS that I mean by "operations of opposition" (where the contrary operations have NO adversarial perspective undergirding them), then we are fine.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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One Love
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| Posted 1/13/2007 4:33 PM (GMT -6) | | Exousia: Love does what it can to maximize good for it's beloved, knowing that this will inherently decrease God's displeasure.
Jeff: YYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is called MOTIVATION, in my way of thinking.
What I mean, Jeff...is that God's motivation for right-relatendess is NOT the decrease of God's displeasure. It is the maximization of good FOR OTHERS. God just knows that a SECONDARY EFFECT of God's maximizing good is his OWN increase of pleasure.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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One Love
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| Posted 1/13/2007 4:36 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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