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    The Gods direct all things for the use of men — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
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    The Gods direct all things for the use of men

    Divine AttributesNatural Theology
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.People had never heard anything about the temperament of the rulers (Gods)
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    • 2.People had to judge the temperament of the Gods from their own temperament
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    • 3.People believe the Gods act this way in order to bind men to them and be held by men in the highest honor
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Natural phenomena such as earthquakes, plagues, and droughts harm humans indiscriminately, showing no purposive direction toward human welfare.
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    • 2.A deity genuinely directing all things for human use would not permit systematic natural evils that serve no discernible human benefit.
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    • 3.Epicurus established that divine beings, by definition perfectly self-sufficient, have no motivation to arrange the world for others' benefit.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Spinoza demonstrates in Ethics that Nature operates through necessary causal laws entirely indifferent to human desires or purposes.
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    • 2.Projecting human temperament onto divine rulers, as the supporting argument concedes humans do, is a recognized anthropomorphic fallacy invalidating the inference.
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    Topics

    Divine AttributesNatural Theology

    Connections

    2 topics

    Skepticism2 linkedInsubordination to God1 linked

    Related

    A deity genuinely directing all things for human use would not permit systematic...Epicurus established that divine beings, by definition perfectly self-sufficient...Natural phenomena such as earthquakes, plagues, and droughts harm humans indiscr...People believe the Gods act this way in order to bind men to them and be held by...
    +4 moreShow less
    People had never heard anything about the temperament of the rulers (Gods)People had to judge the temperament of the Gods from their own temperamentProjecting human temperament onto divine rulers, as the supporting argument conc...

    Similar

    People believe the Gods act this way in order to bind men to them and ...72%The prejudice that Gods direct all things for the use of men was chang...71%Uniform experience establishes that all men must die65%Providence grants man the capacity to acquire virtues63%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: spinoza
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    And since they had never heard anything about the temperament of these rulers, they had to judge it from their own. Hence, they maintained that the Gods direct all things for the use of men in order to bind men to them and be held by men in the highest honor. So it has happened that each of them has thought up from his own temperament different ways of worshipping God, so that God might love them above all the rest, and direct the whole of Nature according to the needs of their blind desire and
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Spinoza demonstrates in Ethics that Nature operates through necessary causal law...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit