Cap'n Refsmmat

Hm. I think there's a loophole in this argument that allows us to have a morally good God. Assuming the OP's argument is valid, we can't have a morally perfect omnipotent omniscient God. Jettisoning moral perfection is unattractive because God's moral perfection is the foundation of much of our current theology. Suppose, however, consider the matter of justice rather than moral perfection. Is God perfectly just? Well, "just" might mean: Giving someone what is owed to them, as in repaying a debt. Correctly applying higher rules to reach a decision, as in a judge making a just decision. However, neither definition clearly applies to God: God does not owe anyone anything, and there are no higher rules. God cannot be considered just or unjust. Similarly, we might argue that God cannot be considered moral or immoral in his actions, because there are no higher standards. (Clearly one cannot accept Kantian morality for this argument to work.) Now, it might seem like we've just gotten rid of God's moral perfection, but doctrine could still hold that God's word is morally perfect: that is, God's commands are always good. God himself cannot be moral or immoral, and so whether or not he creates perfectly moral beings can't be held against him; but as a matter of faith, we could still hold that God always commands moral things. (Just avoid reading certain bits of the Old Testament for that last part.) Would this still be an acceptable perception of God, which avoids the OP's argument but is still theologically attractive? Or have I screwed up somewhere?

Unfortunately, if we knew exactly which citizens were law-abiding and which weren't, we wouldn't need to be giving out guns, because we'd have gotten rid of all the non-law-abiding ones.

http://xkcd.com/421/

Indeed. If the laptop's more than a year or two old, definitely look into cleaning out the heatsink. I had a four-year-old laptop that I disassembled (Dell provides disassembly instructions for all their laptops on their website -- you just need a screwdriver and some patience) and the heatsink was almost entirely clogged with fuzz and lint. Once I cleaned it out, the laptop was miraculously much quieter and much cooler.

Most of the arguments try to establish that you should follow God's word because God's word is always morally good. Throwing that out makes God rather less nice than many people would like Him to be. A hypocritical and morally imperfect God is certainly plausible, and would not be affected by the argument in the OP, but would not be an attractive choice to many religions.

See premise 7 of the argument. Hiding our powers of moral perfection does not maximize the likelihood of moral goodness, and hence means that God is not morally perfect.

You said "so argument seven is poorly constructed and your argument fails", but argument seven is part of the OP, and is not part of my argument. Right; I meant that if one defines a particular set of goods as mutually exclusive and competing, they cannot be maximized. Hmm. I think one might argue that love is a part of moral perfection, not a separate attribute, but the specifics aren't entirely relevant. Here's what I meant by my argument: Suppose God does value love above moral perfection, and suppose these are competing properties. God takes certain actions that demonstrate his perfect love but are morally imperfect -- he can't achieve both at once because this is logically impossible. If this is the case, then God is not morally perfect. However, the OP stipulates a morally perfect God. You're essentially saying "but that's not a God anyone believes in," or perhaps "God doesn't have to be morally perfect to be exceedingly good -- he may just be good at other things." I think Anselm would say so. Anselm (archbishop of Canterbury a thousand years ago) posited that God is perfect, and defined this to mean that God is that than which a greater cannot be conceived. Using this argument, he was able to describe God's attributes: omnipotent, omniscient, immaterial, eternal, unchanging, and so on. Now, he meant it differently than I think you do. He didn't say God is perfect in every way. For example, one might ask whether God is a perfect liar, but to Anselm lying represents a lack of power. To lie is to imply that you cannot get away with the truth, or that you are of weakened moral character, and so the perfect ability to lie is not perfection at all, but a weakness. So Anselm would say it is quite possible for God to be perfect, but that does not require that he is perfect at everything.

Indeed. There are quite a few products designed for this purpose. Here's some from Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007639%20600028834&IsNodeId=1&name=Cooler As for specific materials... I believe aluminum and copper are often used for heatsinks. You'd want to get as much metal as possible in contact with the bottom of the laptop, to conduct the heat, and as much surface area of metal exposed to the air as possible, so it'd cool down. Of course, you might just end up with a cool laptop and a hot sheet of metal, which is why the various laptop coolers use fans.

I agree, but moral perfection is something very many theological arguments require. For example, why take moral laws (commandments, etc.) from a being that is not morally perfect? Many arguments for religious morality rest on the notion that God always knows what is right and wrong. Or, in other words, a lot of theology depends on moral perfection. Throwing it out would mess up the foundations of those religions.

No. Please see rule 10.

My argument? It's not my argument; I've only heard of it when ydoaPs posted it. Do you mean that an omnipotent God cannot achieve the logically impossible? There are many things we consider impossible (creating matter from nothing is a good one) that God is supposed to be capable of. I presume you mean that God cannot do such things as create a paperweight so heavy that He cannot lift it, because that is a logically impossible action. If one defines goods as competing and mutually exclusive, then, maximizing them would indeed be logically impossible. However, God as defined in the argument is morally perfect, and His moral perfection would be undermined if He valued anything else above moral perfection. That is to say, one cannot be morally perfect if one allows morally bad things to happen but also has the power to stop them. Perhaps there is some other unknown value that is greater than moral perfection that God seeks to achieve above moral perfection -- but then he is not morally perfect. He is perfect in whatever other value that is.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/assange-begins-mansion-arrest-but-his-source-feels-the-heat-2163607.html Apparently prosecutors are seeking a plea deal with Bradley Manning in which he agrees to implicate Assange as a co-conspirator. Manning has been in solitary confinement for seven months now.

It cannot come "at a cost of something of greater net value", since God is omnipotent and can achieve anything. Should maximal moral goodness of all humanity prevent God from achieving his ultimate goals, He is not omnipotent.

Speculative material should be kept in the Speculations forum, if you don't mind. You could open a discussion on your hypothesis there.

A morally perfect God is a presupposition in a lot of classical theology, such as the ontological argument.

Doesn't this merely demonstrate that an extant God cannot be simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect?

When you rip a CD, the music has to be read off the CD and then written on to your hard disk. If the music is read off the CD faster than it can be written on to your hard disk, it is "buffered" in RAM until the hard disk can catch up. If the music is read off the CD much slower than it can be written on the disk, it is buffered in RAM and then written to the disk in chunks, rather than writing tiny segments very often.

It will use some, yes. The CD ripping software will read tracks of the CD into RAM, then write them onto the hard disk. How much RAM it uses depends on how far behind the disk-writing gets.

Finally, the details of the charges against the Wikileaks founder have been leaked: http://www.guardian....-assange-sweden Assange's lawyers respond:

What exactly do you want changed in your genes?

Could you be more specific? I can't exactly rewrite an entire Wikipedia article for you so you can understand it. What questions do you have?

Pardon? Also, I think the answer is: check out retroviral gene therapy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus

It should be immediate. You might have to hit Refresh a few times, since your browser will have the old avatar cached.

Do we know if that contains the Afghan war logs? His lawyer said in an interview with David Frost that it contains the rest of the cables, although he admitted he doesn't have the key and doesn't know the full contents. Nobody does, which I think is part of the point.

Unfortunately I don't have reliable transportation -- whether I can drive anywhere depends on what my parents are up to, and we live in a large neighborhood, so I can't just bike out to somewhere awesome. I'd like to avoid sitting at the computer the entire break, but I don't think I can get out as often as I'd like. On the other hand, I may try a project I can build and test outside -- like a spud gun -- and then experiment with. I happen to have here a copy of Backyard Ballistics that I've never used... Damn. Too late.