Transcription
Oh, is it my turn? Uh, I don't have an argument. I just have like a question.
Okay. Um, or a few questions. I hear a lot of theists to get out of problems, they like say that God doesn't actually have an have a mind. Is that your position or do you think God has a mind and beliefs?
Uh, no. We we we believe in the divine mind. Sure.
Okay. So, I'm an epistemological nihilist. I don't think like anybody can have justified true beliefs. So, and including God, like how would God justify his axioms?
God doesn't have to justify anything because he is the self-referencing authority within the system. So, it's a doesn't even make sense. If God exists, if Christianity is true, that would be like a nonsense question.
Well, I mean, I take So, he doesn't have justification for it. I take knowledge to be justified true belief. So, if he doesn't have the justified true belief, something like the laws of logic are true, then he doesn't know the laws of logic are true.
Again, uh within the system of Christianity, God would not be subject to the laws of the created order because he's the one that put them into place. So God doesn't have to give justified true belief to humans. He is the justification.
So you think God created the laws of logic?
Correct.
Oh wow. I've never heard that one before. Uh so there was a time in which they didn't exist. So the logic that's applicable to the created order is a reflection of one of the divine rays. In other words, it's it tells us uh something about the divine mind, but it doesn't exhaust it and it doesn't logically define the divine mind. So God is not defined by created logic. Even though just like anything else in the created order, right? Like we would say for example that human beings are made in the image of God. I can't take principles about me as a creature and list them about how I'm finite and I exist in time and and these things make up me as a human being and then say God has to then submit to that. It's a you got it backwards and that's what all atheists and all nihilists do. It's a form of idolatry where you have it backwards.
Well, I didn't follow everything you said, but I'm sorry. Are you saying God does not have the justified true belief that the laws of logic are true?
So again, it what we mean by justify true belief will be determined by the system in question. So you're trying to take something from an atheist paradigm and say God has to submit to that. Well, if God exists, he is the ultimate justifier, the ultimate truth, the ultimate basis for our beliefs. So it would be a nonsense question to say God has to give justified true belief.
So he does not have the answer is yes, he does not have justified true belief.
Well, I I would qualify that and say that uh there's an equivocation. Um, when we say that human beings know something, we mean something like uh a belief held for the right reasons, i.e. a true justified belief. Um, and then we say God knows. Um, there's something of an analogy, but that what Jay's trying to say is that that doesn't mean everything that we say and how we define human knowledge therefore maps on to God. So that he has he has a he forms belief and is he are they true and is it justified? Well, not in the same way that that we do.
Um,
what's the common property with the way we do? It's an analogy.
So God
analogies have a common property,
right? So the analogy is that there is a likeness.
So what's the common property?
I'm tell if you don't stop interrupting, then I'm going to boot you because you're not listening.
Calm down, sir.
No, you're on my channel. I'm not I'm not upset. You don't tell me to calm down. So again uh divine our theology is premised on uh analogical predication which means that there's a similarity between um for example uh the divine mind and a human mind. So the fact that for example we have concepts right there's a concept in my mind before I go to build a house I have a conception of it and we would say that that concept bears a similarity to the concepts that god has for example before he created and so the the one example of an an analogical predication would be the divine ideas I have ideas god has ideas but there's not a onetoone correspondence between god's ideas and my ideas and so the argument that you're giving is premised on what's called univical predication. So if I believe in univical predication, which some theists have believed in, your objection would be a good argument, but I don't believe in univical predication. So it's not a good argument.
So there is or is not a common property in the justification. When we say
I just gave you an example of a common property. I said a divine idea is there's an analogy between the two. Again, your argument
I'm sorry, I'm not hearing the common property. I gave you an example of something that is that shares a similarity.
Are you capable of naming the common?
I gave you an example of a divine idea and a human idea.
I'm talking about justification.
So that's a different question from the first question you asked. Okay. You didn't ask for justification. You asked for what is the analogia and I gave it to you. Now you're asking for justification. That's a different question.
No, I'm asking when you say we're justified versus God is justified. What is the You're saying it's a different kind of justification, right?
No, I said that God doesn't have to give justified true belief within our worldview.
That's my question. God doesn't have justified true beliefs then.
So God is omnisient. He doesn't have beliefs. He doesn't he doesn't learn new facts, right? That would be
omnicient means he knows all true propositions.
Yeah. That doesn't mean that he learns thing for that doesn't mean he learns new facts. That doesn't mean he learns new facts, right? It means that he knows
you think that God doesn't have beliefs.
All right, this is getting You're done. Get out of here. Let's move on. Uh so again, if you want to have a discussion, please bring reasonable questions and questions that are based around knowledge of the topic. So if you don't know anything about what you're debating and the what the position is, then please don't come with such low IQ questions. Theosis Pilgrim, what's up? unmute. Uh, Father Deacon, are you there? Can you I got to go to the the little boy's room. I got a wee wee. Can you uh manage this for a second?
Yeah. Hi, Mr. Manager. Father Deacon, I'm nice. And I'll be managing your life, your thoughts and questions.
I'm upset. I got to go cry. That woman got me upset.
Oh, good. I thought she was saying she doesn't believe that knowledge um is true justified belief. So what it was it was really kind of hard to understand what her objections or questions really were too. Who else do we have coming in? Any questions? Well, look in the chat on the YouTube to see if anybody has any questions cuz I don't have control. I guess I'm managing it, but I can't um pick who is going to come in and talk, so I'll just keep talking. Um, a lot of this is similar to the kind of youth dilemma, too. Um, does God act are God's acts good because God does it or is there something separate than God? And it sounded to me like that's where the conversation was going to go. Um and we can immediately point out that with the youth dilemma that um that's a false dichotomy. So remember when we were growing up and and teachers would be like there's no such thing as a stupid question. There's tons of them. Um, and the some of the stupidest questions are category errors. Um, Jay, have you stopped cheating on your exams?
Yes.
You have to answer yes and no.
Um, what's also known is uh the fallacy of complex question. And so I immediately identified she was forming a complex question that was similar to something like the youthro dilemma.
Yeah.
I can see where it was going.
It is fallacy, right? So it's a complex question that it that attempts to um force one into an eitheror. But the other thing too is that the argument uh was resting on the on univical predication. In other words, that God has to God has beliefs and has to justify his beliefs in the same way that we do. But when we speak of things like the divine mind or the divine ideas, uh they are not univical predication. Uh they are analogical predication. And this is so fundamental and crucial to orthodox theology and even to Roman Catholic Latin the all theology really. Uh unless you're some kind of weirdomian. The the only people
how she was trying to force you into that that knowledge was knowledge of propositions. I don't know where
I reject that. Like that's not why why should I believe that?
Well, I mean that would be one type of knowledge, but not all knowledge.
Well, she was saying how does God justify his beliefs? Okay. God doesn't give justification.
She was it's it's not like he like you said he needs no other justification. He is the justification for justification. So,
right. So in other words, she was
you know something similar. I would say you know name the thing that's similar between us and you already started talking about concepts and I think you know although Aerosol's off on a lot of stuff you know there's something somewhat correct about the mind and the thing known become uh one right so that the essence of the thing right there's a sort of kind of union so that I know the thing I know the tree because I know the essence Right. It's it's not just it's not propositional. It's not a copy like a lock in or something like that. I would say that the things the trees all the things in the created world that are made after the logoy um God is one with the logoy. Right? So there's a similitude there that the the thing um or the thing that it's fashioned after um and the knower one there's a kind of communion right and you know for us if we come to form those beliefs and contain those ideas or like you said concepts in the right way then that's justification but as you rightly pointed out but God doesn't do that God doesn't form beliefs Right. So she wanted to push you into a very narrow or perhaps even incorrect um definition of knowledge. Then second commit the fallacy of univic
unus.
Um and then do a gotcha. Oh but so your god doesn't do that got you right. And you weren't playing it. So well done.
Okay. Okay. So, let's uh understand and I put this into the chat. Uh I recommend if people haven't read it over at Stanford uh encyclopedia philosophy, there's a great um essay I read a long long time ago I recommend on uh medieval theories of predication. And this is the medieval philosophers working out what was in the Greeks, what was in the petristic tradition. So um clearly yes as orthodox we would tweak this a little bit because we wouldn't say that the predication is to the divine essence is to the energies or to the to the operations of God. Uh so you know basil on letter 234 says that the divine names are applicable to the divine operations. They're not applicable to the divine essence. But when we do that naming in what sense do we name? In other words, if we call God uh just, if we call God powerful, if we call God love, um there's different types of predication that the medievals listed. And what we get it typically boiled down to is univical predication, equivocal predication, and analogical predication. And there's not really other options for this, right? Right? I mean, this is this is really all you have in terms of ancient and medieval and biblical theological traditional conceptions here. Um, there might be a nominalist who thinks it's none of these things. I mean, maybe in modern theology, maybe father Romanes thinks that through his nominalism, he would not accept any of these. But um if we think of somebody like Unomius, Unomius had a univical theory of predication where he thought that when when I say God is just, the conception I have in my mind of just is absolutely identical to what God is. There's ab there's no distinction, no uh magnitude of God's justice that's greater than the thing in my head. They're identical. They're univocical. So her argument was hinging on God's quote justification, justified true belief being required in and in in the same sense necessary for God to do as we do. As if God is a man, right? As if God is just some dude who has to justify his beliefs like we do. Okay? Well, God is not a man. And God doesn't learn new facts. The mode of being of God's existence is not the same as the mode of being that humans have. Humans come to be in time. Humans are in time and space. Humans learn new facts. Okay? God doesn't come to be. God doesn't learn new facts. That's what the word omnisient means. Okay? So there's no it's a nonsense question in our paradigm to say what is God's justification for his beliefs. It doesn't even make any sense. He doesn't he is the ground of the entire system. The grounding is self-referential because what could God appeal to above or outside of God? For God to have to justify his beliefs would be contrary to the Christian system because it would be deposit some standard above that God must above God that he must submit to.
That's a great response. We should use that more often to um put the onus back on the other person and say, "Explain to me how that's a sensical question." For example, if I ask you how fast does two run uh uh how fast does two smell running on t uh Wednesday?
Yeah.
Wouldn't the burden of proof? Now that's obviously a clear nonsensical. Sometimes we get in philosophy and theology questions that seem to be sensical that need to be kind of analyzed to show that like that's not a coherent like there's nothing to make sense out of that. So I think that might actually be kind of a a good response back that explain to me how you think that's a meaningful or sensical or not a category error.
Let's read this. So medieval theories of analogy were concerned with how we speak and reason about God when we say things about God. Medieval thinkers reacted to these various positions by pointing out and developing a theory by which words were divided into various sorts independently of context. Some words were univical which means that they were always used in the exact same sense. Some were purely equivocal used with very different senses and some were analogical used in related senses. Analogical terms were thought to be particularly useful in metaphysics and in theology because they were routinely discussed in commentaries on Aristotle's books of logic and in logic textbooks. The background to this discussion is given by the theory of analogy uh and so forth. Anyway, it goes on to talk about medieval theories of analogy. And so again, so uh remember these three because these are the three that will come up and they're really fundamental to theology proper, right? The Unomians taught univical predication. That the concept that I have of father, of essence, of love, mercy is a onetoone correspondence with what God actually is. And Basil makes fun of him for this because he says, "You think you have a definition and a conception of God's essence? You're crazy. How could you?" Right? This is why we believe in apathetic theology. You know, Mius didn't believe in apathetic theology. He believed in total cataphat theology. onetoone definitional correspondence, but we also don't believe in equivocation or equivocal predication because that would mean that they're opposite very different senses. Right? That's the mistake of Father Romanes that anything that you say about God, there's no similarity between divine names, divine naming, and created names. Right? That's what we critiqued in that three or four hour Romanes critique. Okay? He's argue and and univical predication would be something like excuse me equivocal predication would be something like a nominalist view and that's what Romani says. So he he says I'm a nomalist. I agree with William. Uh we don't do either of those right and so we believe in analogical predication and some Roman Catholic or toist might say well that's Aquinus's position. Yeah but we don't differ with Aquinus on analogical predication itself. We differ on where the predication matches up. Right? Aquinus says analogical predication is to the divine essence. We do not say that. We say with Basil, we name the energies that come down to us, not his essence. Two different positions. So familiarize yourself with what it means to predicate of the divine, what the divine names mean, etc., and you won't fall into the trap of atheists who are making arguments on the basis of univical predication. Next up,