agondonter:3. God took action in creating the universe because there is ONE THING that God, being perfect by definition, cannot do: experience the thrill of choosing perfection or not.
This strikes me as odd. If there is something God cannot do, then how is he perfect? Alternatively, does the state of perfection preclude choice? But if so, then how could God choose to create? If God is perfect, how can he feel uneasiness? In what sense are you using the word perfection here and is it is a sense that can be sustained consistently in discussions about God?
Yours in liberty,Geoffrey Allan Plauché, Ph.D.Adjunct Instructor, Buena Vista UniversityWebmaster, LibertarianStandard.comFounder / Executive Editor, Prometheusreview.com
> Could someone give me an account of that argument?
I think everyone is reading too much into it.
Rather than worry that your god is being attacked, look at it from the other direction.
Posit someone who has no want that cannot be instantly fulfilled, for whom scarcity does not exist, for whom time preference is not an issue and who has perfect knowledge.
Now, give me a better word for it than "god".
Mises was not anthropomorphising, he was explicitly pointing out that such an individual would not be human. Therefore, trying to justify various economic theories by positing situations such as an evenly rotating economy or perfect knowledge is, by simple definition, irrational to apply to humans and therefore a disproof of the very economic structures and schools that try to use such situations to justify their conclusions.
I think that's a rather strained interpretation. For one thing, it has never to my knowledge ever seemed to occur to anyone. Rather, it seems to me that Mises is in fact offering an argument from God. And, if I'm not mistaken, was himself an atheist or agnostic. Correct me if I'm wrong here.
To my knowledge, Mises was an agnostic, which makes a lot of sense in light of his views on absolute truths and ethics.
Do none of you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
The "invisible hand" of economics is in fact His noodly appendage. He intervenes in the free market at every point to make sure His utilitarian plans unfold.
RAMEN!
I find Mises’s argument against God based on the perfection paradox to be rather interesting. It does seem that for perfection to occur, everything would have to fall within it’s proper, perfect place, and if God acted, thus moving out of that perfect state, he would no longer be perfect. This seems to tie the hands of God.
I think Mises builds a trap for himself in Human Action when basically says that if a superhuman God exists, the human mind would be unable to grasp the nature and functionality of such a being. This is just another way of saying that such a God would not be bound by logic. However, anyone familiar with the “omnipotence paradox” would quickly realize that Mises has engaged in a contradiction. For to prove or suppose that God is not bound by logic, one must engage in logic in order to do so, and, thus, the statement is effectively meaningless.
To state it another way, if someone said, “God exists outside of logic and is not bound by logic,” the validity of this statement, i.e. whether it is true or false, can only be arrived at by logic itself. You cannot refute logic with logic, and you cannot refute reason with reason. The only conclusion possible to reach is that God, if he exists, is also bound by logic, for human beings cannot even conceive or argue that God exists any other way.
Logic is inescapable, and it continues to amaze me that some Christians think they can wiggle their way out of the omnipotence paradox by claiming that God exists outside logic or that God created logic and is not bound by it himself. All these assertions are self-defeating.
There is a way to resolve the problem Mises identified, and that is by acknowledging the existence of means that are constitutive of a certain end, i.e. that are not merely instrumental but that are part of it (e.g. competing in a sport may be a means to winning a prize, but in part the competing may itself be inherently rewarding and partially be what makes the end worthwhile pursuing.)
gplauche: But is God a rational agent? I think the action axiom applies, at least in its essence, to all rational agents. If he's not a rational agent, what is he?
But is God a rational agent? I think the action axiom applies, at least in its essence, to all rational agents. If he's not a rational agent, what is he?
If we stipulate that man is created in God's image (which I do) and also understand that the Hebrew word for "image" is more closely translated as "nature" (which it is), then God must be a rational being, because man is a rational being. However, our reason is obviously imperfect whereas His must be perfect, or, as it was said earlier, He could not be God by definition. But that sort of perfection does not mean the absence of want. The idea that God is "perfect", meaning not wanting anything, is the result of a mistransliteration from the Greek and Hebrew languages, and partially the fault of the ambiguity of vulgar English.
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!
Inquisitor:There is a way to resolve the problem Mises identified, and that is by acknowledging the existence of means that are constitutive of a certain end, i.e. that are not merely instrumental but that are part of it (e.g. competing in a sport may be a means to winning a prize, but in part the competing may itself be inherently rewarding and partially be what makes the end worthwhile pursuing.)
Exactly. To put it in simplest terms, God is not dissatisfied precisely because He acts. His state of perfect satisfaction is defined to be an active one. The obvious objection is that "He must have been dissatisfied just before he started acting," but that objection doesn't work for eternal beings. There never was a "before he started acting."
Another attack is to dispute Mises's definition of "perfection." He assumes that it entails complete absence of dissatisfaction. Perhaps he's just wrong about that.
--Len.
nshore: To state it another way, if someone said, “God exists outside of logic and is not bound by logic,” the validity of this statement, i.e. whether it is true or false, can only be arrived at by logic itself.
To state it another way, if someone said, “God exists outside of logic and is not bound by logic,” the validity of this statement, i.e. whether it is true or false, can only be arrived at by logic itself.
Ever heard of Kurt Gödel?
Mises was very wise to reject praxeology as applicable to God. In fact, there are three "levels" of sciences: (1) natural, (2) social, and (3) theology. It is a mistake to attribute dissatisfaction or action to God, so praxeology is of no help when theorizing about God.
A.N. Whitehead got closer than anyone in figuring out what the proper object of study of theology is, though he got it wrong in the specifics. Theology studies creativity as a fundamental force above God and above being, of which God is an aspect. (Very much like the fact that there is no (2st-level) ghost in the (1st-level) machine; the machine is an aspect of the ghost, as Gene Callahan brilliantly pointed out.) All the ways in which classical theologians like Aquinas describe God are true but are on the 2nd level. Thus, for example, God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit represents metaphysically and morally perfect, as well as fully satisfied or happy 2nd-level God, the fully sated divine self-interest. That God does not and cannot act: what would motivate a perfect being to go to work creating? What this God does in His eternal present is He contemplates and rejoices in His own infinite perfection. There are refinements to that but I won't go into them.
Divine goodness suffices God; charity fills Him but does not "overflow" into creation, because why would it?
So this creativity on the 3rd level imbues God with itself, as superadded (1) charity which goes beyond self-love or the love between the Father and the Son and into loving imperfect beings separate from God, (2) knowledge which goes beyond mere self-knowledge of the immutable God and into knowing the changing world (such as what time it is now), and (3) power which goes beyond the Father's (internal, natural, 2nd-level) power to beget the Son and into the 3rd-level, external capacity to create ex nihilo. All 3 persons are thereby uplifted by creativity's grace which gets God out of Himself into acts of loving self-giving.
That's the basic outline of what I think to be the correct beginning of theology.
gplauche:But is God a rational agent? I think the action axiom applies, at least in its essence, to all rational agents. If he's not a rational agent, what is he?
What do you mean by a "rational agent"? That one acts for a purpose? That one acts to alleviate distress? Isn't this just using the definition to prove the definition's argument?
God is not a "rational agent," no. God is a creator, a creator of moral judgment, a creator of human existence, a creator of all that has been created.
The Origins of Capitalism
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baxter:Do none of you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?The "invisible hand" of economics is in fact His noodly appendage. He intervenes in the free market at every point to make sure His utilitarian plans unfold.
Niccolò:God is a creator, a creator of moral judgment, a creator of human existence, a creator of all that has been created.
God is a creator, a creator of moral judgment, a creator of human existence, a creator of all that has been created.
All of which assumes, first, that there are gods.
That assumption is why theology is not science.
It was a shrewd invention to put some intermediate link between nothing and something in cosmology – a reasonable being. Which of course is an absolute absurdity from the point of view of pure logic. And what is logic?
The most important thing which we get accustomed to by our everyday experience is that we are living in a world where there act the laws of preservation (preservation of things or subject-matter in time, space…) of which the logic is just a formal expression. Every time we have to deal with their seeming inobservance we ascribe it to luck of knowledge or intervention of some unknown forces including mystical ones. But as a whole the method of our dealing with such cases is: to admit some additional cause and to give it the shape of manipulable one (of natural law or invest them with reason and conduct negotiations…). In any case we can not escape logic (or the preservation law). And a God lacking logic is ungraspable by our means of thought and of no interest to us, because it does not add to predictability of the world we live in, which is the main (and perhaps the only) task of our reasoning faculty (as we understand it). That is not may be exactly what Mises said about the problem (he somehow avoided explicit expressions on the matter) but I think that it does not contradict what I learned from him…