Simplicity Book FINISHED!

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

Why not charge something for this book, Jac, considering all the effort that you put into it? Send it out to some ministries you like and they may print it, sell it and benefit from it.

FL

[Jac3510]

Uh oh,
check the last sentence on page '1'.

Oops. Fixed it. Somehow some text got moved around in the sentence. Also was pointed out a few typos elsewhere in the book by somebody else--only four, though, so I'm pretty sure that we're close to all of them now, haha!

Why not charge something for this book, Jac, considering all the effort that you put into it? Send it out to some ministries you like and they may print it, sell it and benefit from it.

FL

I don't know. I think it is worth something, but as abstract as the idea is, I wonder if it would sell. I hope word of mouth might encourage people to get it if it is free. I am going to develop a two part course and use this as the textbook, so maybe I could recoup some of my time investment in terms of money that way. I do believe the verse about a worker being worth his wages is true . . .

Like I said, I don't know. It's just so easy to put it on Kindle and make it freely available. I am considering, though, self-publishing and making a print copy available at a cost. So maybe some people might pick up that copy? I'm certainly not going to give that away for free. I'd go broke in a huge hurry that way!

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

I would buy 5 copies. I bought 5 copies of B.W.'s book on Amazon. I have already spent $20 in ink & paper at Staples for your book because I printed it out...on good paper. Nothing but the best.

Where do I send the money?

FL

[Jac3510]

Haha, thank you for the generosity and support. I'll have to talk to some publishers first, probably self-publishers. And if I do THAT, I want Richard Howe to write a foreword to the book (he's the director of the doctoral program at Southern Evangelical Seminary -- here's his webpage: http://richardghowe.com/) and maybe get a few endorsements from some other professional theologians and pastors I know.

[jlay]

Chris,

Couldn't you release it as an ebook? I buy a lot of stuff for $3 or $4 bucks on Kindle and Amazon.
No printing costs to deal with. Just the initial overhead on publishing for print means you have to sell x number to make it financially feasible.

[Jac3510]

Chris,

Couldn't you release it as an ebook? I buy a lot of stuff for $3 or $4 bucks on Kindle and Amazon.
No printing costs to deal with. Just the initial overhead on publishing for print means you have to sell x number to make it financially feasible.

I am mulling this over . . .

If I do, I want Richard Howe or Scott Henderson to write a foreword to it if they are so inclined and get a few endorsements.

[abelcainsbrother]

Jac,
I finally was able to start reading your book last night and so far I find it very interesting and I like how you keep on pushing without at first revealing what you're getting at.It causes you to want to keep reading.

[IceMobster]

.

I don't like stuff like(and I know you mentioned in the introduction that you won't be doing that ): "Let me not get technical jargon/into latin terms." and I'm having a feeling the author thinks I'm retarded/dumb at times, probably because of certain repetitions...
Despite that, the book is great. I wish there was a translation in my language.

[Jac3510]

Thanks, Ice. I'm glad you found it helpful! And I'm sure there will be some people put off by the level of writing. I made it a very big part of the work to make it "bottom shelf," not because I think people are dumb but just because most people have never heard of the subject, have absolutely no experience in philosophical theology, and just do better at that level. I figure those--like yourself--who easily follow it and are interested would have no problem finding more nuanced discussions of the subject. Among them might be my thesis, which the book is based on. You can find it at my blog if you'd like to plow through that work . . . it'd certainly be a good sleep aide! (cmmorrison.wordpress.com/papers)

May I ask what your language is? I suspect you've said somewhere before, but I have to confess I don't remember.

[Storyteller]

Charging my kindle so I can download it, will read it later x

[IceMobster]

not because I think people are dumb but just because most people have never heard of the subject, have absolutely no experience in philosophical theology, and just do better at that level.

Yeah, exactly.

(cmmorrison.wordpress.com/papers)

I'll make sure to check it out.

[Hortator]

I can't even finish reading a book, let alone write a book...

[Jac3510]

I can't even finish reading a book, let alone write a book...

Start by reading this one!

[Kurieuo]

Jac, came across an interested discussion with William Craig re: what some like Ed Feser charge him, Plantinga and others as having "Theistic Personalism." It quickly gets into some interesting Divine Simplicity talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU2WLZ9mO8o

[Jac3510]

Craig is the reason I looked into Simplicity in the first place--specifically, the chapter her refers to in this interview. I've just never found his objections, this discussion included, terribly persuasive. His chief argument against the intelligibility of God is not only wrongheaded but I think is a detriment to his view. He wants to suggest that Thomism leads to a "deep agnosticism" about God's nature, picturing God as some unknowable and unintelligible thing. But that's the exact opposite of the real problem. We don't know God because He is shrouded in darkness but rather because He is blinding light. God is supremely intelligible--more intelligible than anything else in our own experience. The very reason we cannot say, "God is like that" is because "that" is a necessarily delimited and defined term. But God has no limitations (not in the sense of limitations of capacities, i.e., more or less power, but in essence or nature--that is, there is nothing that is in and of itself that God lacks). Really think about this. To suggest that God is that is simultaneously to say that He is not this (unless one is willing to be a pantheist). But if God is not this, then this has some aspect of existence or perfection that God lacks. That means that this perfection that God lacks literally came from nothing--not just in the creation ex nihilo sense, but literally in the sense from nothing at all. You would literally be saying that when God brought this into existence, it had absolutely no rooting in Himself. In some sense, it would just have no cause at all! I mean, at least the Platonists would say that ideas were distinct in God and preexisted in Him, such that when God created something from nothing, the idea at least preexisted in Him. But to deny even that leads to obvious absurdities.

Now, Craig can get out of this--and I think he does take this approach actually--by taking the very line I just mentioned above. Since he is not bound by DS, Craig can claim that there really are ideas that are in God that are distinct from God. The "platonic menagerie" really does exist in the mind of God. "Three" and "being purple" and "to the left of" all really exist in the mind of God. But as Craig himself shows in the video series I linked to in the math thread some time back, that idea is ultimately absurd as well. It amounts to a complete denial of aseity, such that God is absolutely dependent on the existence of those properties for His own existence. It is certainly unscriptual (by Craig's own argument) because it has certain parts of reality that are uncreated by God.

So Craig's problem here, like elsewhere in his writings, is that he substitutes an actual analysis of the arguments in favor of DS with a mere argument from incredulity ("that's just unintelligible!"), which, of course, is a fallacy. If he is to affirm aseity, which he recognizes he must, then he MUST affirm DS to be logically consistent. For any being that exists a se cannot be composed of parts; for any being composed of parts is contingent on 1) those individual parts; 2) the unity of those parts (on the pain that dissolution of those parts means the entity no longer exists); and 3) some causal principle for why those parts are arranged this way rather than that. Since to exist a se is to be completely necessary with no contingency, then any a se existent must necessarily not be composed of parts, which is to say, it must be simple. Craig, as is typical of him, just refuses to discuss this argument at all. Nor does he discuss the argument following the first way from pure actuality. Instead, he leaves us with mere incredulity, veiled personal attacks (suggesting that it is wrong to "make up" terms like "theistic personalism"--hello, poisoning the well), and puts forward a very weak Platonism that has been rebutted in multiple ways and without comment on why we should adhere to his Platonism even if the face of those objections. I would refer you to my thesis for an entire chapter on why Platonism must necessarily be wrong (or at least an entire section -- I don't remember -- I just know I didn't cover it in the book as it got too technical).

In short, it's just unpersuasive.