Are the claims made about Catholics on that page true? What is the Catholic position on total depravity?
This requires a Thomistic response.
The only claim I see is one about affirming the goodness of the human being qua human.
A human qua human is a creature made in the image of God. Insofar as man is made by God, and furthermore, made in His image, man is good. Neither that wevare made by God, nor that we are made in His image and likeness, is destroyed by the Fall. Thus man, in this sense, remains good. God said after creating each thing He created, "It is good", and after creating man, completing creation, "It is very good".
A thing is also good by virtue of its pointing to God. Anything with any amount of perfection (thus anything with any amount of actuality) is good, since all being, qua being, is good. Thus man is good.
What St. Paul, and Christ Himself, are emphasizing is that nothing is good independent of God, since there is no and can be no being independent of God. They are also emphasizing man's need for God to redeem him after the Fall, since, once Fallen, the journey back to glory is not passable without God making a Way (which He did through Christ).
Protestants are generally very confused about Scripture, sadly.
@ARM, I began replying to your message, which I was also going to send to Chiro, but being on mobile I mis-tapped and went to a different page. I had a long response written. Basically I was explaining what I've explained before, using the example of almsgiving. Principle of excluded middle; an action itself is only good if its genus, species, accidents, and end are good. Giving feces instead of alms, giving financial means to a suicidal man to buy rope, instead of to the hungry; giving while one's children are starving instead of while they are well fed; and giving for the sake 8f vsinglory instead of charity - any evil in any one of these elements corrupts the goodness of the action. Thus the end being good, but the other elements being evil, is insufficient to justify the action (the means to that end). The genus, species, and accidents must be good also, or the action is not licit.
As for forms, it's a metaphysical dispute. A Cartesian physicalist may reject that any category has meaning outside the mind, sure. But I think that is ridiculous; there is obviously something real known as a triangle (as a genus) whether or not there are various instantiations of species (scalene, equilateral, etc), and this genus is meaningfully distinct from separate genuses, such as that of the square.
but being on mobile I mis-tapped and went to a different page. I had a long response written.
Likely story.
may reject that any category has meaning outside the mind, sure. But I think that is ridiculous; there is obviously something real known as a triangle
Math forms are uncontroversial. The form of the good is controversial. What is the support for there being a form of the good? The forms of mathematics follow from necessity from definition. Does the form of the good follow from necessity from definition?
Thus the end being good, but the other elements being evil, is insufficient to justify the action (the means to that end). The genus, species, and accidents must be good also, or the action is not licit.
I know that is the claim, but what is the justification, particularly when we have intuitive counterexamples?
Do you remember that discussion we had weeks ago when you were defending Moore's non-naturalism? I described a naturalistic position for goodness that compared it with the concept of sexiness. It relied on the claim that being is good. The metaphysical claim is that good things promote stability of being, which supported the naturalistic moral claim that what is good in nature is what promotes the endurance and survival of a thing.
I am wondering if there is a way to do this a priori. We have to be able to say that being is good, by definition. It must be better to be than not to be, all else being equal. Perhaps it is sufficient to get us there simply to cite Leibniz's rhetorical question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" If we take the metaphysical possibility seriously that nothing is equally as (or even more) probable as something, then to be something is better than nothing. (After all, if there is nothing, then there is no possibility to know true facts and knowing is better than not knowing).
If being is good by definition, then from here we might be able to get to the Form of The Good aprioristically.
I say: if being is good, then that which sustains being is necessarily good.
Once being is, the only possibility to not be, is via change.
Therefore, the first subordinate good to essential Goodness is to not change, or to be eternal.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. [James 1:17]
To not change is just what it is to never be surprised (and by extension, to never not know).
Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. [Psalm 139:4]
Definition: The absence of surprise is the presence of perfect information.
In terms of information, the highest probability is equivalent to the outcome with least surprise, being either zero or one. Moreover, since we have established already the One (by the goodness of being qua being), then it can be said that all deviation from this is equivalent to change, and therefore to surprise.
The elimination of surprise in any system is synonymous with symmetry, and by the definition above, perfect symmetry becomes equivalent to perfect information. In a string of fair coin flips numbering six tosses, the most symmetrical outcome, which also features the least surprise, is 000000 or 111111. Any outcome deviating from this indicates surprise.
In the case of a shape, for example, we could think of information as the equation which describes the path of the shape, such that any point on the path is known with the least amount of surprise and the least amount of change by one equation.
The only closed shape that can be described by one equation is the circle.
In geometry, the path which features the least surprise is equivalent to the most symmetrical for any kind of motion within phase space.
A line has a beginning and an end point. This is a signal of change. The only possible path which neither begins, nor ends (and therefore does not change) is the circle, which also coincides with the path of least surprise.
The symmetry of any subsequent shape that is possible in the universe derives, first, from the symmetry of the circle. A shape is not symmetrical which cannot be inscribed on a circular path.
We deviate for a moment to address the triangle, given that it featured in your original question.
Given what has so far been said, a line contains more surprise than an enclosed plane. A plane is where space begins. We may say that a line has extension, but only in time, where it connotes a duration. Space begins with enclosure and boundary. Thus a circle is perfect space (incidentally which, taken in three dimensions - forming a sphere - is the object which maximizes the amount of possible spacial enclosure while minimizing surface area: minimizing the necessary limiting information and maximizing potential space).
The first subordinate shape which can enclose space within the circle is a triangle.
The most symmetrical triangle which can be inscribed within a circle is that in which the height (taken from any vertex to the opposite side) is equal from every vertex. This just is the equilateral triangle.
Being the most symmetrical of all possible triangles, we reason that it contains the least surprise, and by analogy (and given the a priori symbolic realism which is afforded to geometry) is the triangle which is the least subject to change.
To highlight something important related to Oneness, we can also show that for an equilateral triangle having angles ABC, the ratio of A:B:C is 1. The ratio of the lengths of the three sides is also 1.
The same is true for the perfect square, the ratio of whose sides and internal angles is exactly 1.
Finally, for any circle there is just 1 perfect triangle and square possible.
But it must be argued that this symmetry connects to stability. Here we encounter some difficulty due to the fact that it is simple to show that symmetry is surprise-minimizing a priori, but it can only be tethered to actual stability with an a posteriori example.
(1) A Priori:
The most enduring 3 dimensional shape featuring only triangularity which can be circumscribed at all its vertices by a sphere, is the octrahedron, which is composed of equilateral triangles.
(2) A Posteriori:
Half of an octrahedron is an equilateral pyramid, which was the geometry of the great pyramids at Egypt, and which in defense of its Ideal Form, is the shape approached by all ancient megalithic pyramidal structures. There is a way to build an enduring pyramid, and that way is the most symmetrical One.
For our analysis of triangles, we say that every triangle does indeed have a form, but insofar as each particular form approximates the most perfectly symmetrical and enduring form of the One Triangle (that which is most eternal and least likely to change), we come by our judgment to view each and every instance according to its approximation of The One...and by the same token: its goodness. For we are beings, and because we partake of the most basic goodness, in our degrees we approach beauty to the extent that we love what is symmetrical, and therefore enduring.
That which is most symmetrical must be God, for whom there can be no surprise, and therefore no change. Hence, God is eternal, unchanging and all-knowing, and since He is, He must also be the highest Good, and by way of the foregoing: all-powerful and the source of all other being, which is necessarily contingent.
Concluding, then, I argue that a priori the Form of the Good is perfect symmetry.
All other aspects of goodness which can be experienced follow from this fact.
In the physical creation, the first instance of said symmetry and perfection is the circle, which is precisely the reason why it has been taken to be - by diverse and disconnected cultures throughout history - as the most primitive and basic symbol for God which is possible to represent.
As it concerns the way this Form of the Good relates to goodness, as such, I argue that it is possible (in the terms of pure information) to show that goodness arises from symmetry in the direct perception/experience of the mind which is perceiving goodness. Thus it confers to the phenomenon the positive judgment. Likewise, the breaking of symmetry can account, and despite the necessary degrees of context-leaping, for all of those things which we say are bad in life.
And on top of this, we can build both a metaphysical, and even a natural, theory of moral interpretation.
How's that?
(This might be the best argument I have made to the three of you, ever, and in my opinion.)
I know that is the claim, but what is the justification, particularly when we have intuitive counterexamples?
Part of my long reply that got deleted was going through your examples.
Satisfying hunger by eating is not justified by the end (satiating hunger) alone, but also by the goodness of the genus, species, and accidents - unless those elements aren't good, in which case eating would not be licit (e.g. the species of the food to be eaten is human flesh).
Adultery to deter suicide is not licit because, while the end of deterring suicide is good, the genus and species are evil, so the whole act, not being good, is made evil, according to the principle if the excluded middle. Evil actions are not licit.
(post is archived)