The generally accepted definition of God is logically flawed. For instance:
1. It is impossible for both omniscience (all-knowingness) and omnipotence (all- powerfulness) to inhere in the same being, since a being that knew the future would be powerless to change it, and a being that could change the future could not know it in advance, and
2. an omnipresent being could not perceive, for one perceives from a perspective that is not identical with the object of perception, and such a viewpoint would be lacking for an omnipresent being, and
3. it is even impossible for a perfect being to think, for perfection is singular, and thought is the movement of mind between multiple concepts, but they are also violations of Occam's Razor, in that there is no necessity for the concept to explain the perceptions we have, and it is not either verifiable nor falsifiable, and therefore is an article of belief, not knowledge, and... well, there's lots more, but that should be enough.
The classical attributes of a deity are singularity ("there can only be one") omniscience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful), omnipresence ('(S)He’s everywhere!"), omni-beneficence (all-good), and omni-sentience (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 irresistible 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. -- Joe Dees
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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 conceivably 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 appellation mires one in a miasmic quagmire of irretrievable contradiction, once one journeys beyond emotion-driven faith and uses one's noggin to divine (Luvzda pun!) the nonsensical and absurd consequences necessarily entailed.
Heisenberg tells us that omniscience is not possible at the particle level. Once one obtains complete information about a particle it evaporates. So the simple fact that baryonic matter exists tells us that there is no omniscient entity in our Universe. Given that so much else is dependent on causation at the particle level, omniscience is not possible at the macro level either - unless the Universe were frozen to absolute zero. The Universe is not frozen. Thus there are no omniscient creatures in the Universe.
Given C as a constant, and given Universal expansion initially at near C, and apparently accelerating, any being which was omnipresent would take an infinite amount of time to communicate between its extremities, and would require an infinite amount of energy to do so. Given that the Universe is neither uniformly hot nor at absolute zero, we know there is no omnipresent being in our Universe. In addition, as all the energy would be used in transferring information, no energy would be available to do anything - thus omnipresence and omnipotence are mutually exclusive.
The processing of information necessitates storage. Storage of information requires at least as many storage locations as the thing being stored unless the information being stored is highly compressible. As the Universe is comprised of particles which are truly a noise source, the Universe is not compressible and Shannon tells us that it will require a minimum of twice the material in the Universe to store the information inherent in the Universe. For one instant. Thus an omniscient god would be the Universe's largest amnesiac, unable to think from one moment to the next. Such a being would never be able to do anything. In other words, this is a contradiction between omniscience and omnipotence.
The inventors of the gods were not philosophers, and were not scientists. They were prehistoric and historic con artists. "Wickedly good" mememakers. Mankind has moved on more than a bit since then in just about every possible way, while the "perfect" gods have remained frozen in time and left far behind. It is time to recognize that the only difference between our gods and the myths of others is perspective. And through a telescope, they are all far enough away to look identical. When we realize that, mankind will realize that Nietzsche's announcement was accurate and that it is time for new memes. A little earlier we saw that we may already be on our way to obsolescence. Hopefully our memes will survive us. The CoV and the people in the CoV and our successors have the potential to help to form these replacement memes. A fun job indeed. -- Hermit
Posted by pdf23ds Metahuman's quoted arguments are bunk. Pure and simple. They result from small-minded people thinking complicated thoughts with incorrect assumptions. They sound pretty biased to me. That's beside the point though. For the sake of time, I'll just address the first complaint they had, though I can move on to the second and third later.
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1. It is impossible for both omniscience (all-knowingness) and omnipotence (all- powerfulness) to inhere in the same being, since a being that knew the future would be powerless to change it, and a being that could change the future could not know it in advance, and ...
This argument has force only under the (mistaken) assumption that God is somehow part of time. The author didn't believe this was a necessary assumption--he later used God's timelessness as an argument against him being able to think at all. But once one brings into the fore the concept of God's being outside of time, one can see that it is entirely possible God exists in his own stream of time, one skew to ours, and that we exist as a four-dimensional, static object within that time stream. To use an analogy, we would be like a ship in a bottle on God's workbench. Time begins at the stern, and flows forward toward the bow. (I'm using nautical terms correctly, aren't I?) Time is to the inhabitants of the ship universe what length is to the ship's maker. The other two dimensions are the spatial dimensions. Our ship universe inhabitants are rather flat. Changing our future would be like making changes to forward parts of the ship. There is no question that we could make such a change to a real ship-in-a-bottle (hard as it may be to get through the glass--we can ignore that little caveat, since God is immaterial, and the universe isn't, where both us and the ship-in-a-bottle are material). So the question I pose is, where is the disanalogy? Changes God makes to our future would take place in his future. All of our existence plays out in one time-slice of his time. I don't see how it should be impossible that he change our future.
Re:A logical analysis of the existence of God
« Reply #2 on: 2003-08-02 20:25:05 »
Can Demon's correspondent, who appears to have his rudder and bowsprit entangled (examine his use of assertion rather than even attempted reasoned refutation and then refer to Lewis Carrol's "Hunting of the Snark") please identify the gods s/he is discussing, and clarify the source of her/his assertions on the 'four dimensional attributes' of her/his supposed godhood.
Certainly I don't recall any thing like that postulated here from my theological studies. The gods in the myths I have been exposed to were like those of the Judeo-Christian mythology. Indubitably bound in with time and needing e.g. "to stop the sun" in order to give them time to commit genocide. A habit which their followers have not yet relinquished some 2,500 years later.
In any case, I think that Demon's correspondent misses an important point. Postulating a multi-dimensional nature for "god-time" [a non-realizable model as space-time is not separable] does not simplify her/his problems, it makes them far worse. If a postulated god being is "outside of" or "skew to" our space-time (and within an inertial frame, space and time are irrevocably bound) then if the postulated gods attempted to interact with our Universe they would cause massive destruction, as normalizing the time vector of the hypothetical gods (as asserted by Demon's correspondent) to our Universe, would result in a skewing of the local space vector (and vice versa). Stipulating that some transform were available to perform this imaginary, unproved and probably unprovable hypothesis, it would, even in free vacuum, result in a massive alteration in the strain energy, This suggests that such an interaction would require the expenditure of huge amounts of energy (and would incidentaly violate the laws of thermodynamics). Even assuming that the postulated gods have access to unlimited energy, are permitted to violate the laws of thermodynamics and are themselves immune to the consequences of releasing such devastation, any baryonic material in the vicinity would be disassociated by such an interaction.
So the postulated model suggests that gods as described by Demon's correspondent would instantly destroy any portion of our Universe with which they attempted to interact and thus would be precluded from meaningful interaction with our Universe. Given the harm that the mere idea of gods has caused men over the centuries, I suggest that this is probably a "Good Thing".
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
The crux of the difficulty with reconciling omniscience and omnipotence is that a universe ruled by an omnipotent deity would have to be completely non-determined, that is, given any existent present, such a universe would have to permit of an infinite number and variety of possible futures, since such a deity would by definition have the ability to actualize any future it could conceive. OTOH, a universe ruled by an omniscient deity would be superdeterministic, that is, admitting of only one possible future, the very one of which our hypothetical omniscent deity was already aware, and in which it itself, by dubious virtue of its own omniscience, would be trapped without recourse. Since the universe cannot be simultaneously non-determined and superdetermined ~(A + ~A), the simultaneous deific inherence of omniscience and omnipotence is a logical impossibility.
[pdf23ds] Hermit's response makes as much use of unfounded assertion as he would have us believe mine did. John Dee's response does nothing more than restate his orignal assertion.
[xanadu] hmm... Well, I didn't want to jump into the fray but...
What makes anyone assume God is anything like us? He made us in his image... so what image is that? If it is true that God necessaily exists, then perhaps the image in which we were created was existence. I can think of no other reason why people want to anthropomorphize God, other than the Bible passage: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27), and doing so allows us to better understand God.
So, to say he exists outside of time is entirely plausible, and just as plausible is the fact that God can exist both as omniscient and omnipotent. It might be said that there is some inconsistencies in such a claim, but remember it is God, and not man. Leibniz's mistake was in implying that God too was subject to laws such as the Principle of Identity et. al., I am criticizing both those who attempt an anthropomorphic description of God (and what other way is there?) and those who object to such descriptions, using anthropomorphic objections. Therefore, I largely find fault with the premises of the former people and the objections of the latter people.
Of course, if we were to adopt what I am suggesting, we would just be adopting a mystery, the mystery of mysteries. The secret within a secret, and that is no good. Nothing is true until we compartmentalize, conceptualize and abstract every notion there is to be had about a given thing... and only then we might consider its validity. So, perhaps the fault is not on God or the defenders of his existence, but perhaps it is on humanity's insistence that everything is definable and discrete... oh and I don't necessarily subscribe to the above musings, but they do bother me often.
[marcus_lex] The point is that it isn't necessary for me to produce a counterargument because it's been done so many times before. The problems of God's omniscience and omnipotence are truely old. They were even addressed by Augustine (345-430). You may want to look into the Thomist and Molinist theories on the problem of God's Omniscience and freedom. If you want something more recent try Alvin Plantinga's God's Omniscience Does Not Preclude Human Freedom.
On the problem of omnipotence you might consider Thomas Aquinas's Is God's Power Limited?, George Mavrodes's Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence, Harry Frankfurt's The Logic of Omnipotence, or Nelson Pike's Omnipotence and God's Ability To Sin.
If you have some trouble actually understanding these or if you really want to enter into a dialogue about the problems then I'd be happy to oblige. However, if you want to simply do theist/atheist point conterpoint, then I'd just give it a rest. It only gets shrill and who hasn't seen it before.
[Mikhel] "So, perhaps the fault is not on God or the defenders of his existence, but perhaps it is on humanity's insistence that everything is definable and discrete."
I believe that it is valid to assert that God cannot be defined by man. The problem comes in first accepting that such an entity even exists. I don't want to try to address that argument, I'm just pointing out how we run into our problems. As you stated, and pdf elaborated on in his own manner, Dee and such attempt to prove that God cannot exist by basing their argument on the assumption that if he did exist they could necessarily understand him, or that God would exist in a manner similar to our own (time as an arrow instead, as pdf point out, outside of time).
I guess all I'm wondering is where we stand on being able to understand concepts like infinity, omnisience, and omnipotence, and how we could ever hope to apply these to a being that is in possession of them, as in relation to our own existence which is finite, limited in power and in knowledge.
[pdf23ds] "Nothing is true until we compartmentalize, conceptualize and abstract every notion there is to be had about a given thing... and only then we might consider its validity."
This seems to be implying that for the truth of an idea to be considered, we must have a really comprehensive idea of that which we are considering. But don't you think that truth must be evaluated with the knowledge we do have about something, then re-evaluate as new applicable knowledge is gained? When do we say we have enough knowledge about something that we can trust our conclusions concerning it? How many notions about a thing are too few?
[Mikhel] pdf,
I think he was saying that we cannot verify something as true until we have examined it from ever possible perspective/argument, and it has held up to scrutiny. As we gain new information about the subject's truthfulness, it must hold up to that new information as it comes.
It seems you are saying the same thing, unless I cannot see the distinction.
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