From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Wed Sep 10 2003 - 02:36:55 MDT
Written by David Hill:
The classical attributes of a deity are singularity ("there can only be one")
omnicience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful), omnipresence ('(S)He's
everywhere!"), omnibeneficence (all-good), and omnisoothience (all-true). One can
immediately see that the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence cannot
simultaneously inhere in a single universe. If a deity were omniscient (knew
everything), then it would know the future and thus be powerless to change it, but if
it were omnipotent (all-powerful), then it could change the future, and therefore
could not know it for certain. It's like the simultaneous impossibility of an
irresistable force and an immoveable object; if one of these two deific properties
exists (and they are considered to be the most important two), then the other
logically cannot. Furthermore, If deity were everywhere, it could perceive nothing,
for perception requires a point of view, that is, a spatiotemporal perspective other
than that of the perceived object from which to perceive that object. Deity being
omnipresent (everywhere), there is nowhere that deity would not be, thus nothing it
could perceive. It gets even worse. Deity must be perfect; in fact, perfection is
what is broken down into all those 'omni' subcategories. thus, a perfect deity could
not even think. Thought is dynamic, that is, to think, one's thought must move
between conceptions. Now, thought could conceiveably move in three directions; from
perfect to imperfect, from imperfect to perfect, and from imperfect to imperfect
(from perfect to perfect is not an alternative, perfection being singular and
movement requiring distinguishable prior and posterior). But all of the three
possible alternatives contain either prior or posterior imperfection or both, which
are not allowably entertained in the mind of a perfect deity.
There's much, much more that I could add, but this should more than suffice to
demonstrate that asserting the existence of a deity possessing the attributes that
most consider essential to it deserving the deific appelation mires one in a miasmic
quagmire of irretrieveable contradiction, once one journeys beyond emotion-driven
faith and uses one's noggin to divine (Luvzda pun!) the nonsensical and absurd
consequences necessarily entailed.
Show the proposition to be false or accept its possibility.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[Everyone calm down]
;-'>
Walter
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Blunderov wrote:
> OK Jonathan - you've got me going again. Here at least we find some
> definitions of this 'god' thing:
>
> "But I just think there is another world view as well." > Colin
> Humphreys
>
> [Bl.]Colin Humphreys is free to think whatever he pleases. Whether he
> can demonstrate any reasonable basis, other than his own preference, for
> this fantasy is, of course, highly improbable.
>
> "a Creator" Russell Stannard
> [Bl.]Said it before. Say it again. Nothing from nothing. Therefore no
> creator possible.
>
> "God is the God of chance and He had His plan and purpose, which is
> working out very subtly, but through these chance events." Colin
> Humphreys.
> [Bl.]Planned chance? Moving on...
>
> I would say that God does take a personal interest in us. If you were
> allowed one word to describe God by, that word would be love. Stannard
>
> [Bl.]Aha! The semantic Mesada of theists, the last redoubt. Of course,
> if god is love then god might reasonably be said to exist. Oddly, this
> god of love that takes a personal interest in us seems to leave a lot of
> 'bones in the wake' (Tom Waits). Why does this love find it necessary to
> create so many victims? Are we to take it that, say, cancer, is evidence
> of this love? Or war? Or evil in general? If so, then this must be some
> strange new usage of the word love with which I am not familiar. The
> theist retort is usually that it doesn't matter because all good people
> go to heaven anyway. So this love doesn't always look like love right
> now but it all works out ok in the end. Snake-oil is what I say. I'd
> rather buy time-share holidays.
>
> Ironically, in the film "Contact", the Jodie Foster character (atheist)
> is (supposedly) refuted by her religious lover when she asks him how he
> can prove that god exists. He replies "Did you love your father?" She
> replies "yes". He retorts "Prove it". At which she is speechless.
>
> The import of this is, I gather, is that some things are intrinsically
> un-provable. It is my view that she could have made a strong case for
> her 'love' based on an appropriate definition of 'love', her own
> observable behavior at the time and her own report of her subjective
> state. Perhaps it would not amount to proof, but it certainly would
> amount at least to a credible body of evidence for the proposition,
> which is more than can be said for the theistic case.
>
> Interesting that theists (so often) resort to this 'proof' of god (the
> existence of love) and then (so often) deny their own proof by claiming
> it be un-provable. I believe this is what is known technically as
> 'having your cake and eating it'. At bottom, though, this definition of
> god is specious: one might as well say that god is a baby's smile, or
> for that matter, a full bottle of whiskey and a starry night.
>
> Fact is, everybody (well, mostly) dislikes the idea of dying and many
> people leap at the chance, however slim, that it might not actually
> happen to them like a trout leaps at a fly. With similar results.
>
> Fond Regards
> Blunderov
>
> ---
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-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "Reminding you to help control the human population. Have your sexual partner spayed or neutered." --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
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