sure
hence the fumbling ...
Um, no. If I had tried and failed, then it would be a fumble. I never tried, because, as I said, there's nothing to explain.
on the contrary, the absence of clarification is the weak point of both his and your arguments
You seem to think so, but at this point I'm not particularly concerned with your opinions on the matter. Also, there seems to be little question by anyone else as to what he means, so you continually appear to be the odd man out.
yet you still continue to fumble with even the hint of the general direction of this so-called common knowledge.
Do you know what fumble means? I mean, seriously. I've never made an attempt to explain the value, since it's one that appears to be widely understood (present company excluded).
Needless to say, if "goodness" is a value that automatically grants a uniform comprehension of its true and valid application, it would certainly make it a most unique value ....
:shrug:
Would it? Or would it just be one more concept defined by its context? It's the 21st century west, I think there is a fairly common general understanding of what constitutes good and what doesn't. If there
wasn't such an understanding, then questions of theodicy would never arrive. Or, perhaps would never be answered, since no one would be able to settle on the definitions.
On the contrary it provides parameters for discerning the nature of happiness (which in turn contextualizes the so-called problem of theodicy having with an all good god)
Vaguely, sure. But your original contention was that it exactly defined happiness, which it does not. It doesn't even provide exact
parameters. It's just another one of your wishy-washy "please bail me out, I'm in way over my head" fling-shit-on-the-wall-and-hope-something-sticks comments. There's no substance here, which is why you've already retreated from your original claim.
You can do better than this, can't you?
its certainly doesn't appear that way
Evasion. You are borderline trolling here.
Sure, you are both playing god as being necessarily incomplete
You could say that I am, in the sense of God being a man-made construct and therefore not being a fully-realized character. I'm not sure how you could say the author is doing the same, however, unless you're suggesting that he means God is incomplete in terms of how he is being presented in scripture. Is that what you meant?
however the vagueness (and inherent weakness) lies in his and your inability to explain precisely why this "evil" is "irredeemable" and "could not serve some greater good"
No it isn't. You're trying to add levels of complexity to this argument that are not required. Do you have some sense of what evil is? Of why it would be irredeemable to kill millions, or why there is no greater good worth that much suffering? You must, since you're an adult human being living in the same or a similar society to the one that the author lives in, at the same time as the author is living. Your refusal to accept that there is some general consensus for these terms is of no consequence, because it, frankly, is bullshit. You clearly do know what he means by what he says. You're, again, trying to obfuscate the matter.
IOW I think we can both now disregard your earlier statements about discussions of "happiness" having no bearing on the problem of theodicy as both you and the rabbi are presenting
This is another lie. I never said happiness had no bearing on the problem of theodicy. What I said was that happiness was not one of the terms we were discussing in the context of you allegedly not understanding their meaning. We had been discussing your lack of understanding of the concept of
goodness prior to that, and "evil," but not "happiness." You brought up happiness as if I had failed to define it in my previous answer, when we weren't actually discussing it. Hence the remark about it being a non-sequitur. Unless, of course, you mistakenly interchanged the two words "happiness" and "goodness," which I guess wouldn't be terribly surprising.
At the moment I am just trying to help you form a coherent argument by understanding the necessary terms that are integral to the points you are trying to make
No you're not, you're just pretending not to know the definitions. Oh, and you're also trying to define them and failing miserably (see your piss-poor attempt earlier). You've once again bitten off more than you can chew, and you're trying to go in circles until I drop out of the debate so you can save face. Unfortunately, anyone reading this can already tell that you're full of crap, so you're only digging yourself a deeper whole by continuing this charade.
