Catholicism and Persuading God

Originally posted by no1marauder
So you expect that there is some possibility in the future that God might be amenable to persuasion?

Taking Question 3 first it's:

If GP (God Persuasion) theneither X or Y

Taking the answer to Question 2 as "no" (as you said it should be):

If GP, X or Y
Not GP
???????

Fill in the blanks, Mr. Logic.

You are just very confused, and now it's showing in your incomprehensible writing. Come back after you have reviewed Strunk & White and any introductory text on critical thinking.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
You are just very confused, and now it's showing in your incomprehensible writing. Come back after you have reviewed Strunk & White and any introductory text on critical thinking.

You might want to try a remedial English course.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Your grasp of elementary English is pathetic. Do you know what the purpose of a paragraph is? What idea is supposed to be presented in this paragraph:

Is it possible to persuade God? If so, doesn't this mean either that without such persuasion, God would have done the wrong thing, or that subsequent to the persuasion God is doing the wrong thing?

...[text shortened]... ally meaningless once the second question is answered "no" as you state it must be.

"If P, then Q" is true whenever either P is false or Q is true. That conditionals with false antecedents are true can be counterintuitive (e.g., "If today is Tuesday, then I have a grandchild".), but them's the breaks.

Originally posted by bbarr
"If P, then Q" is true whenever either P is false or Q is true. That conditionals with false antecedents are true can be counterintuitive (e.g., "If today is Tuesday, then I have a grandchild".), but them's the breaks.

Applying such rigid rules to normal discourse leads to such idiocies. I prefer my sentences to make actual sense somewhere besides Philosophy 101.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
From the Catholicism and Posthumous Miracles thread:

[quote]
If you are praying to P for healing you are asking P to talk to God on your behalf. You are believing that P is already in heaven and not in purgatory, and thus is able to converse with God. It is not unlike my going to ark13 and asking him to talk to his father about some matter that c ...[text shortened]... ve that such a God would not heal your cancer unless he was persuaded to by a deceased person?

No, it's not coherent.😏

Originally posted by no1marauder
Applying such rigid rules to normal discourse leads to such idiocies. I prefer my sentences to make actual sense somewhere besides Philosophy 101.

Really? Are there any other logical operators, such as NOT or OR which you think ought not be applied in normal discourse?

For example, in normal discourse, is it true to say on a sunny day in Nigeria:
Either it is not raining today, or the ground is getting wet.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Applying such rigid rules to normal discourse leads to such idiocies. I prefer my sentences to make actual sense somewhere besides Philosophy 101.

Wow. You have really gone off the deep end, haven't you?

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Is this coherent with the rest of your beliefs?

Consider this scenario:
Q has cancer.
P is a deceased person worthy of being a model of grace and veneration.
X is a deceased person not worthy of being a model of grace or veneration.
Q petitions P for help and God performs the miracle to affirm P as indicated.

However, applying your analysi ...[text shortened]... ing X instead of P, Q would have been healed. Is this consistent with the nature of an OOO God?

However, applying your analysis, you would have to find that in this same scenario, if Q had petitioned X instead of P, Q would not have been healed.

I don't see why. If Q petitioned P and a miracle occurred, P must be a saint, independent of whether X did or did not perform a miracle, or is a saint or not a saint.


That is, if Q thinks that some dead pope is saint material and petitions him for intervention, but that pope is actually an X, God cannot allow the healing, lest it affirm that X was a saint. (If God did allow the healing, then X is affirmed as a saint just as P would have been, which would contradict your claim that God uses miracle healings to distinguish saints.)

I'm not saying that God cannot allow the healing. If we continue with the thought experiment, God might heal the person for reasons other than the affirmation of a saint, I'm not sure what those other reasons might be, or how Catholics might distinguish them...but that's a matter of practicality.

Do you see the corner you paint yourself into with this analysis? God is bound to letting a guy die of cancer in order to prevent a sainthood; that is, but for Q petitioning X instead of P, Q would have been healed. Is this consistent with the nature of an OOO God?

Is this consistent with the nature of an OOO God? Do you mean the attributes of omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience? If so, no.

From your argument I can only assume you mean something like bemevolence. In my opinion to heal one person in such a way as to affirm a person, who is a not a saint, as a saint, would be the moral worse. If X were affirmed a saint, and hence worthy of veneration and emulation, then that skew people's perception of what is saintly. If X, for example, taught against the Church, or practised a vice, then the encouragement to emulate X as a reputed saint would in itself be a worse moral evil.

Originally posted by Conrau K

I'm not saying that God cannot allow the healing. If we continue with the thought experiment, God might heal the person for reasons other than the affirmation of a saint

Then this would deny your own claim, for as you just formally stated "If Q petitioned A and a miracle occurred, A must be a saint." You can't have it both ways.

You can't have the miracle affirm that the petitioned is a saint in the P case, and yet not have it affirm that the petitioned is a saint in the X case, since by stipulation, the petitioner can't distinguish between P and X beforehand. The observation of the miracle is the very decision process that you are claiming allows the distinction to be made.

If you abide by your original claim, then you would have to accept that X is in fact a saint once Q petitions X and is miraculously healed, and your acceptance would be in error, since God must have healed Q for a reason other than to affirm that X is a saint. If you deny this, then we are back to square one in figuring out how to test for a candidate saint's performance of a miracle.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Then this would deny your own claim, for as you just formally stated "If Q petitioned A and a miracle occurred, A must be a saint." You can't have it both ways.

You can't have the miracle affirm that the petitioned is a saint in the P case, and yet not have it affirm that the petitioned is a saint in the X case, since by stipulation, the petition ...[text shortened]... o square one in figuring out how to test for a candidate saint's performance of a miracle.

Then this would deny your own claim, for as you just formally stated "If Q petitioned A and a miracle occurred, A must be a saint." You can't have it both ways.

That is a very tawdry simplification. It has to be shown that the miracle must have followed from Q petitioning. Otherwise the miracle might have occurred for other reasons, say to allow Q to develop Penicillin.

You can't have the miracle affirm that the petitioned is a saint in the P case, and yet not have it affirm that the petitioned is a saint in the X case, since by stipulation, the petitioner can't distinguish between P and X beforehand.

Well yes, the petitioner can. Miracles are not the only condition for sainthood. For an easy example, P may have been a martyr and a generous person while X was a mass murderer. It bugs me why a person would petition X though....

Originally posted by Conrau K
[b]Then this would deny your own claim, for as you just formally stated "If Q petitioned A and a miracle occurred, A must be a saint." You can't have it both ways.

That is a very tawdry simplification. It has to be shown that the miracle must have followed from Q petitioning. Otherwise the miracle might have occurred for other reasons, say to allow ous person while X was a mass murderer. It bugs me why a person would petition X though....[/b]

You don't understand the scenario, and you are adding to the confusion by using circular reasoning.

To clarify, Q cannot distinguish between P and X; to Q, they seem equally likely to be saints. But God can distinguish them, and knows that only P is worthy of being a saint.

Now, imagine two universes. In one, Q petitions P to petition God for a miraculous healing and gets it. In the other Q petitions X to petition God for a miraculous healing and gets it. Can we subsequently conclude anything about the sainthood of either P or X? That is, does or does not the observation of the healing convey information regarding the sainthood of the petitioned?

Originally posted by no1marauder
Applying such rigid rules to normal discourse leads to such idiocies. I prefer my sentences to make actual sense somewhere besides Philosophy 101.

And I prefer not to equivocate on the meaning of 'if, then' statements. As long as you understand the difference between material conditional and the implicative conditional you should have no trouble making sense.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
You don't understand the scenario, and you are adding to the confusion by using circular reasoning.

To clarify, Q cannot distinguish between P and X; to Q, they seem equally likely to be saints. But God can distinguish them, and knows that only P is worthy of being a saint.

Now, imagine two universes. In one, Q petitions P to petition God for ...[text shortened]... ot the observation of the healing convey information regarding the sainthood of the petitioned?

This thread is hurting my head. I say someone needs to end this thread PDQ. 😛

Originally posted by Nemesio
Wow. You have really gone off the deep end, haven't you?

Sorry to insult YOUR God.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Really? Are there any other logical operators, such as NOT or OR which you think ought not be applied in normal discourse?

For example, in normal discourse, is it true to say on a sunny day in Nigeria:
Either it is not raining today, or the ground is getting wet.

Again, there is a thing called a paragraph. The sentences in this thing are supposed to stand together and present a coherent idea. Your's didn't.

Dr S.: Is it possible to persuade God? If so, doesn't this mean either that without such persuasion, God would have done the wrong thing, or that subsequent to the persuasion God is doing the wrong thing?

Then you said it is not possible to persuade God. So what exactly is the purpose of the second sentence?