The highest degree is the degree to which something higher cannot be conceived.
All of us are all of us humans.
Are you telling me that you have never judged something as being high, higher, or highest?
“Perfectness” is the quality of goodness to the highest degree.
"Perfectness exists in the world of God, with God, as a part of God.
I’m unable to say whether (Anselm, perfection) is a dyad or not.
So, your beliefs and claims are based on the allegorical tales, not facts or proven truths. Is it correct?
Common definition is just description of the words in other words. It does not contain any proof or evidence.
Who conducts the measuring? What is good and beautiful to you could be ugly and bad to others. How do you decide which is which?
Higher than what? What do you mean by high and higher? In terms of what?
But every human has different mind, standards and preferences.
Have you heard the song lyric going “One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor?”
I am not sure what that is. Never seen or heard of anything like that. Please give us some examples from the real world.
Where is “the world of God”? In which country does it exist on the earth? Or is it in some other planets or galaxies?
It’s a ridiculous argument. As if “2 is higher than 1, therefore there must be a highest number”.
Making an assertion is not presenting an argument.
How is it a straw man?
The triad (highest degree, God, perfection) is better than the dyad (2 > 1, \neg \exists (\infty)).
Perhaps word salad makes sense to the delirious.
What do you suppose is meant by perfection?
I posted a dictionary definition for reference. Perfection is being flawless/defectless/satisfying all requirements. So a cigarette would be perfect if it’s the right length and diameter, has the required dose of nicotine, burns in the right way, etc.; a face would be perfect if it’s symmetrical, unblemished, perhaps allowed are a few beauty spots here and there, etc.; a recording of a song would be perfect if there’s no noise, no annoying clicks, the voice is clear, the music too, etc.
I’m hopeful that the deadlock will be broken.
I don’t see any potential for reconciliation. Your position is incoherent.
Yes, some of my beliefs and claims are based on the allegorical stories written in the language of mythos by poets. Some of these stories may be literally true, may not be literally true, or may reveal a greater truth.
Our entire discourse is just a description of the words based on common definitions. I ask again, what proof or evidence are you asking for?
We do.
Yes. That is why we have these endless debates about what is beautiful and what is ugly, and what is good and what is bad.
I compare the measure of the quality of the beautiful and good against the quality of perfect beauty and perfect goodness. The beautiful and good are the nearest to perfect beauty and perfect goodness. The ugly and bad are the farthest.
Usually when I talk about high, higher, and highest, I am speaking in terms of height.
That’s true.
I have.
Perfect straightness is the quality of straightness to the highest degree.
In a previous post, I gave you the example of the straight line.
What is the quality of a good straight line? Straightness.
What is the quality of a perfect straight line? perfect straightness.
The world of God is everywhere with God, as a part of God.
Allegorical tales say the lions and tigers smoke pipes, and the old bear ate garlics in the cave meditating to become human. Doesn’t go well with rational reasoning or logic afraid.
They are not for truths. They are for fantasies and imaginations.
Your confusion seem to be coming from the groundless beliefs on the ancient allegorical tales. Not fit for rational arguments.
Not quite. I’m saying that if God didn’t want Adam & Eve to have knowledge of good and evil, he shouldn’t have plonked the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in front of them, In addition, it is not the best move to tell them not to eat of it (i.e. telling them that eating it was a bad thing and they should not do it) when they couldn’t possibly understand what he was telling them. Understanding the rule requires understand that eating the fruit was a bad thing to do and obviously they could not understand that unless they knew the difference between good and evil.
I don’t think it is any different. I just think that they did not have our concept of evolution and consequently could not be trying to convey anything about it in the story. The distinction between our rational and irrational selves is a different story. I don’t remember it coming up in the Bible, but it seems not impossible that it was at least partly written (or revised) around the time that the Greeks were developing the distinction.
Yes, that’s not an impossible interpretation for us. I just think that it is a bit of a stretch to think of Palaeolithic life as a paradise of any sort, though some people seem to think it came close. Whether the corruption was the development of intellect or the development of cities is an interesting question.
God’s perfection, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”. He created the universe and the universe isn’t perfect; for example there’s evil and there’s a general sense of how the universe is flawed.
So we have the troublesome dyad (God, universe), but as I said previously there’s the dyad (God, Eden). Perhaps we can solve this puzzle by looking closely at the A&E story.
Divine creatively,
Nevertheless the dyad, (God, Eden) was as real.
Well they didn’t have Aristotle (or the cannon of modern human knowledge and understanding) to refer to. They just had what their local Shaman had to say. Rational thought was probably not something people ever came across, they were submerged in a world of superstition.
The point I’m making doesn’t require an understanding of evolution, that is just a suitable concept for viewing the process from our standpoint of learning. For the Palaeolithic person they would use a concept such as Karma, or some other representation of human ingenuity, or stupidity. Just surviving in those days would have been a series of lessons that the primitive mind would have pondered.
I suspect there were wise people such as oracles way back into prehistory who would have pondered this and developed ways of conveying an underlying truth through a story such as the Genesis story.
When it comes to how we use reason, in society, it may seem like there is a kind of balance between rationality and irrationality. That society balances it out in to a rational and progressive narrative, or morality which we live by.
But the point I’m trying to tease out from the story of Adam and Eve is that whatever we do beyond the point, metaphorically, of leaving the garden of Eden, will lead to failure. Because the rationality required to live within an evolutionary niche (within the ecosystem) that we inherited. Or to live in such a way as to not destroy the ecosystem which brought us here. The rational course of action we would have to take, so to speak is very narrow and restricted and would require a detailed knowledge and understanding of how the ecosystem worked, right from the beginning. Something that we were not capable of doing. It is this crisis which the story is trying to convey.
It is upon us, having left the Garden of Eden to make our own way and to secure our own long term future. Nature won’t come to our rescue, although nature might wipe us out to prevent us destroying the ecosystem completely and let someone else have a go.
It is only being depicted as a paradise to the extent that the ecosystem had provided one for us. There would have been occasions, or places or groups of people who would have experienced some sort of paradise and so that goal would have been seen as an ideal. But also the Garden of Eden represents an uncorrupted world shaped and provided by the ecosystem. One which we could have remained in secure, with our needs met (again it is an idealised concept), had we not stepped out of our evolutionary niche (left the Garden of Eden).
If one looks at the story in this way, it makes perfect sense and belies a simple put profound narrative. Early man lived in an idyllic place (Provided by the ecosystem), then developed intellect and inevitably left this place (due to that intellect) and had to fend for him/herself.
Do all ancient allegorical tales not go well with rational reasoning or logic, and not fit for rational arguments, or just the allegorical tales that you used as an example?
The issue is not the location of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, not God’s rule forbidding Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and not Adam and Eve’s understanding of God’s rule forbidding the eating of the fruit. The issue is the eating of the fruit itself that gave Adam and Eve the knowledge, power, and freedom that leads mankind to evil.
