Lots to talk about today. We got to see Chowon's ultrasound, and the little baby heartbeat. It's a healthy baby so far, so that's exciting. Also went to a friend's funeral today.

All this got me thinking about the nature of good and evil. I believe that God created all things good, and that good is distinguished as that which reflects the nature of God. So all things which exist, being created by God, exist as reflections of His character.

Before I finish talking about good and evil, I want to give some background about my understanding of the ontological nature of things in general. It's here where (as far as I can tell) I deviate from Bahnsen's argument, because he used platonic objects as means to derive the nature of a thing. I think that the use of platonic objects necessarily puts them epistemologically prior to knowledge of God.

So, first to explain platonic objects as I understand the concept: We're familiar with the discussion about "what makes a table a table?". Tables come in so many shapes and sizes that if we attempt to qualify each one, then we the specification describing tables would be immeasurably long, but if we try to simplify the description of a table too much, then we will find things which are certainly not tables but which still fit the description. Plato suggested that the reason we are able to distinguish multiple very different things as types in a category is because of a perfect exemplification of that thing which exists in our minds: the platonic object. So, we have a perfect exemplification of tables existing in our minds, and that enables us to distinguish between diverse tables and non-tables. This discussion is also referred to as "the one and the many". What is the "one" which describes perfectly the "many"?

I disagree with Plato about that. Here are my thoughts in short: Plato himself was never really able to solve the problem, the flaws in Plato's philosophy are elucidated by other people more knowledgeable than me, adopting platonic objects eventually leads to an irreconcilable worldview, they are incompatible with the epistemological argument, and this is not actually the topic I wanted to get into here.

Now, with that in mind, if someone is to say, for example, "we understand that God is bright because God characterizes [the platonic object] brightness", then we have put other things epistemologically prior to our knowledge of God. The issue here is that it implies that we need other knowledge before we can understand God's revelation to us, and there is no source for that other knowledge. As a rule, "nothing" is incapable of producing "something". Even the world, which we say was created "ex nihilo", came into existence as a result of prior vocalizations by God. So then, a rectified version of Bahnsen's argument places God first. It would be better to say, "brightness exists (and we understand it) because brightness exemplifies a characteristic of God (which God has revealed to us)".

I heard another approach to the topic wherein someone explained that the only reason we are able to conceive of platonic objects is because God perfectly exemplifies the "one and the many" by being simultaneously one God in three persons. However, then we enter into a sort of loop, where we need platonic objects to understand God's "one-in-many" characteristic, but we need God's "one-in-many" characteristic to explain platonic objects. I think the objects are an unnecessary addition; in a world where God is perfectly capable of literally anything at all, God is perfectly capable of revealing knowledge of himself to us, and thereby being himself the perfect exemplification of all created and revealed things.

Here's the potential issue: What about evil? If everything exists because it exemplifies some characteristic of God, then does evil also exemplify a characteristic of God? Does the existence of evil pose a threat to the epistemological argument?

So, as I was thinking about this in the car, I originally planned to issue here my understanding of Augustine's discussions about the ontological nature of evil (which he explains in his excellent work, City of God), but it's been almost 2 years since I read it so I didn't want to make mistakes when I explained his point of view. I cheated and looked for something to refresh my memory on the details, and found instead this other blog that did a better job of explaining it than I was planning to do.

https://www.str.org/articles/augustine-on-evil#.Wy2SyKdKiUk

The above post, I think, reflects a better understanding of Augustine than I have, so I'm going to use it and my memory to complete the post as I hoped to give it.

In short, the above article describes Augustine's position, which (as I remember it) is (here is the short version of the description that I was going to give) that evil is in its own ontological category. It doesn't exist as a thing on its own, but it is rather a description of the tendency in humans to prefer lesser "good" over the supreme "good", where the supreme "good" is to exemplify God's nature.

God's nature is expressed in complex ways. For example, God is three persons in eternal and perfect community, and so expresses Himself by creating beings who enter into community with one another, learning about God by learning about one another. But on the topic of Good and evil, we are allowed to choose the lesser good so that God can again express characteristics of His nature, not the least of which is His love for justice.

I feel like it wouldn't be totally straight-forward of me to forego mentioning that I'm tip-toeing around some hazardous ground in this post. For example, in explaining why the goodness in learning about God is, in itself, an expression of God's nature, which is a community, how then God, eternally and perfectly omniscient, communes with himself without learning about Himself, knowing everything in Jesus while simultaneously limiting His own knowledge about the day and hour of His coming (for example). It is conversation that's likely to cause me to be misunderstood and called a heretic. Likewise, (here is where I need to re-read City of God), how our propensity to choose the lesser good expresses a characteristic of God, rather than simply providing opportunity to express justice. Perhaps it's because of our unbelief, fueled by ignorance, fueled perhaps by inexperience (Isaiah in chapter 6 has such a sanctifying experience); and such ignorance is itself a means to express God's communal nature by enabling us to learn about one another. To be clear, the ground is not hazardous because it breaks the argument; just like if you shoot an arrow into the air and are not sure where it will fall for lack of careful calculations, it is knowable that the answers to these questions falls within a certain range which does not violate my epistemology. The ground is hazardous, however, because the answers should be very carefully worded, and I haven't thought carefully enough about them to give that careful wording. On these particular issues, a slight deviation from the truth more easily may be the first step in a trail of thought leading some incautious reader to heresy.

As a final side-note on Augustine, I want to point out that I think that if we adhere to an Augustinian view of the nature of good and evil, then Anselm's Ontological argument is a tautology. If it is the case that everything which exists is good, and everything good exists (dependent on the notion that a perfectly good God exists and created everything good in order to fully express His own characteristics), then nonexistence is characteristic exclusively of evil things. So, with that in mind, Anselm's premise that a thing which exists is better or more perfect than a thing which does not exist is not entirely unfounded. Therefore, while I agree with the ontological argument, I do not think that it is usable in discussion with atheists, because they don't have the necessary prior agreements with Augustine.

Last thing, and maybe this should have been a post on its own, but I wanted to tack it on here... It's hard not to notice HRC's logo on cars all over the place.

I think that the logo exemplifies a category error commonly made by advocates of equal rights. To be clear, I am fully in favor of equal rights. However, I think that it's important to make a distinction between equal rights and equivalent rights. Therefore, I advocate placing the following symbol side-by-side with the HRC symbol.

There. With these two logos next to each other, we have a more coherent statement. Equal rights; not equivalent rights.

I recognize that some math systems use this symbol for other meanings (symbols are often re-purposed in different systems, which is why we have like 5 sets of symbols for use in discrete algebra). I'm using it here to mean "not equivalent", because that's how I was taught to use this symbol in my discrete math and digital logic classes.

The issue at stake in the gay rights movement is that they lack equivalent validation for their assertions about morality. It is not that they lack equal rights. A single man, straight or gay, may marry any single woman who agrees to it. Every man has that right equally.

"First of all, we would ask why their gods took no steps to improve the morals of their worshipers."