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Originally Posted by yaaarrrgg  I hear rhetorical phrases like "water is wet" a lot, and they are odd sounding to me. Is the statement "water is wet":
(a) always true,
(b) sometimes true, or
(c) never true?
This question similarly applies to statements like "God is good." Same overall problem arises. For some people this statement is a tautology (true by definition). For others it's sometimes true (empirically verified). For others it is false. |
I see where you're coming from with the similarity to "God is good", but I don't think they compare directly. Water is wet, by several of the many precise definitions for wet. It's a trivial solution, like "7 is a factor of 7". However, with God, there's the question of existence. To those that believe in God, maybe God == Good by definition. But to those that do not, it can be argued that something that does not exist cannot be inherently good or bad.
I suppose if you really want to get existential you could say that water doesn't exist either, that the world is an illusion created and manipulated by your mind... but I think most would agree that the existence of water is less often disputed than the existence of God.