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One way for divine simplicity to come out right 1 Year, 10 Months ago
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(For the uninitiated: the doctrine of divine simplicity, hereafter DDS, is the theory that (if God exists) God is absolutely and completely devoid of any structural complexity. Why would anyone think this kind of thing? Well, grant that God is so ultimate that It depends on no other reality for Its own. But also let properties be universals. Now if God's properties are universals separate from Itself, then in order to be God, God would have to depend on those universals. So God would not be absolutely ultimate. Therefore, God's properties—e.g. ultimate power and knowledge—must not be separate from God's intrinsic nature in any way.)
Some concepts are simple/unanalyzable/sui generis/however you'd like to put it. For the sake of this discussion, I'm going to call irreducible concepts atomic concepts (to parallel the atomic/molecular distinction in formal logic). Even so, they might "contain" other atomic concepts, too. Consider red: it comes with (arguably) extension (ever see a less-than-2D red?) as well as "being a color" and I'd imagine some others.
Now I don't think it'd be accurate to attribute the extension of the color red to red's instantiating a separate universal for extension. It seems truer to say that red contains its own extension in itself. So wouldn't it be possible for the concept of God to be atomic and yet contain concepts of a kind of power and knowledge unique to God?
The first thing to say against this version of DDS is that it's not too plausible to claim atomicity for the concept of God. But I'll freely grant that for now as this is just a conceptual puzzle I'm trying to solve.
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Re:One way for divine simplicity to come out right 1 Year, 10 Months ago
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My major problem with this is the question why Red, and why not Blue? So if say so atomic God has distinctive features like atomic Red, then why those features and not some other? The whole problem is with the omnipotence and the "ultimateness" in a form like, why God is the ultimate and omnipotent and not Blue or Red?
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Tarus
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Re:One way for divine simplicity to come out right 1 Year, 10 Months ago
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When I think of divine simplicity I envision an infinite spiritual static stuff that lacks the capacity to be dynamic because it doesn't have any moving parts. It lacks the means to process, store and transmit information. It lacks the energy to create and/or change anything. It exists in a state of permanent immovability, a completely inactive blob.
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