Beautiful exegesis. I’ve been here for some five years and don’t recall coming across anything like your approach for the Canaanite problem.

Mike, fallibilist

Holy Cow, this thread blew up. Cookery woke the giants... :) Sorry David; you never gave God a privation of goodness (evil/sin), rather Cookery did by asserting God "essentially tortures babies" and proof texts that assertion with Ps 137. I got crossed in my responses to you and him that was my error. I agree, what God can/will not do is not be God. Cheers!

>I say nothing about Cookery's arguments or points.

That is irrational. My dispute with him and his arguments are what is at issue. I am after all accusing him of equivocating. This is special pleading on your part.

> As to the argument that you outline above, the fallacy is not a fallacy of equivocation. There is no single term that appears under different significations in different premises.

That makes no sense? Clearly Murder vs mere killing are different significations in different premises. That is self evident like 1+1=6-4.

> Rather, it is a fallacy of begging the question.

I don't believe it is impossible for more than one fallacy to exist in an argument. I could concede that is a problem as well.

>The argument that you sketch out above begs the question because it assumes without proof that the tacit premise, "if it's killing, then it's murder" is true. And there is much reason to deny the truth of such a premise.

Sorry but we are not arguing proof but definitions & internal consistency. Cookery is trying to find a contradiction between the God of Classic Theism and the God of the Bible (which he strawman creates from scratch based on his own self serving interpretation of Holy Writ and not the Catholic interpretation thus he special pleads, equivocates and begs the question). Part of that claim of contradiction is the idea in Classic Theism God cannot command what is intrinsically evil like torture. Cookery claims God issuing haram commands is "murder" but he clearly is equivocating on the Catholic definition of murder. Thus Catholicism is clearly internally consistent and his claim to find a contradiction fails.

Also he equivocates at the drop of a hat like you beg the question.

I say nothing about Cookery's arguments or points. As to the argument that you outline above, the fallacy is not a fallacy of equivocation. There is no single term that appears under different significations in different premises. Rather, it is a fallacy of begging the question. The argument that you sketch out above begs the question because it assumes without proof that the tacit premise, "if it's killing, then it's murder" is true. And there is much reason to deny the truth of such a premise.

equivocation.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/81/Equivocation

Quote"I want to have myself a merry little Christmas, but I refuse to do as the song suggests and make the yuletide gay. I don't think sexual preference should have anything to do with enjoying the holiday.

"
Note when we say we should make the yuletide gay we mean make it happy not that we should pull a Milo or Tammy Bruce with members of the same sex.
Thus "God commands murder because he commands killing. Murder is intrinsically evil and contrary to natural law therefore God in the Bible is against natural law" (that is clearly Cookery's argument in a nutshell. Go back and read it yourself. But killing generically and murder specifically are understood in two different senses.
I am even more convinced now then I was before.

>Jim, in the interactions we've had along the lines you recall above, we never really got to the meat of any question. We were starting to over on Dave's blog but didn't get far.

That is true and I blame your equivocations. It is not personal.

>Part of the reason was that we kept getting mired in disputes over terminology. Such as the above.

Well without proper terminology then mistakes abound. Don't believe me? Go back and read some Young Earth Creationist literature.

> The faults of which you "accuse" me [and Cookery] (using that word w/o emotional connotations) are not cases of equivocation unless we're using a term in different senses in the same deductive system as though it bears the same sense over the premises.

How are you not? You equate Physics with Metaphysics (making a big deal with Aristotle's anachronistic Physics of his day and ignoring the fact he is modeling real change vs the metaphysical arguments of Parmedidies that real change is impossible and only apparent). He thinks killing and murder are the same thing.

It's rather plain to me. You deduce the five ways are invalid because of Aristotle's physics & he deduces God commands murder because God commands killing. Clearly equivocations abound and they are fallacies in this argument.

When I proposed, for example, that in the First Way, the UM is treated as though it is in a genus of movers, as I recall, your replies, that God is in no genus, so therefore the UM is in no genus, did not establish that I was using the term UM in different senses within the same argument. But I am too pressed with other things to open that topic up again now, lol.

>I proposed, for example, that in the First Way, the UM is treated as though it is in a genus of movers, as I recall, your replies, that God is in no genus, so therefore the UM is in no genus, did not establish that I was using the term UM in different senses within the same argument.

But you where clearly using the term "genus" in a different sense then Aquinas as I pointed out too you. So your claim that you discovered

a defeater was wrong and a fallacy.

> But I am too pressed with other things to open that topic up again now, lol.

Fair enough. Do what amuses you at the time and never apologize for it. I am all for that. I practice it myself. ;-)

>That's a fallacy of equivocation. "eclipsed" has a different sense in the major from that which it has in the minor, so the deduction is missing a middle term.

In a like manner murder in the sense of killing is equated with murder in the sense of unlawful killing so it is clearly equivocal. The greater issue being God cannot command what is intrinsically evil. It is true Murder is intrinsically evil but killing is not. Add to that God given His nature cannot murder anymore then He could commit Sodomy with His divine nature(the act of Sodomy requires a physical being. The divine nature is not physical).

>You may think that Cookery fails to observe DIFFERENT senses of some term like "kill" or "Command" when he talks about God and creatures. Such failure is not equivocation.

Clearly it is a fallacy of equivocation. Given your explanation I fail to see how it cannot be?

>You are quick to say someone is equivocating, but I don't think you understand that fallacy.

I think I understand it rather well. What I don't understand is how given what you just wrote I should conclude Cookery hasn't committed it in spades?

Hi, Happy new year.
Implied (why I used enthymeme) but in some parts Cookery is more explicit, he poses in response to the article...
if god is good and theologically does not contradict, and is not arbitrary, but as a biblical god he murders or commands the murder of babies, then the theological and biblical god sins and is evil

Jim, in the interactions we've had along the lines you recall above, we never really got to the meat of any question. We were starting to over on Dave's blog but didn't get far. Part of the reason was that we kept getting mired in disputes over terminology. Such as the above. The faults of which you "accuse" me [and Cookery] (using that word w/o emotional connotations) are not cases of equivocation unless we're using a term in different senses in the same deductive system as though it bears the same sense over the premises. When I proposed, for example, that in the First Way, the UM is treated as though it is in a genus of movers, as I recall, your replies, that God is in no genus, so therefore the UM is in no genus, did not establish that I was using the term UM in different senses within the same argument. But I am too pressed with other things to open that topic up again now, lol.

It is clear that you think Cookery is misusing terms. But not all misuse of terms amounts to equivocation.

If something is eclipsed, then it is deprived of light.
Albertus Magnus was eclipsed by his student from Aquino.
Therefore, Albertus was deprived of light.

That's a fallacy of equivocation. "eclipsed" has a different sense in the major from that which it has in the minor, so the deduction is missing a middle term.

You may think that Cookery fails to observe DIFFERENT senses of some term like "kill" or "Command" when he talks about God and creatures. Such failure is not equivocation.

You are quick to say someone is equivocating, but I don't think you understand that fallacy.