From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Thu Oct 16 2003 - 10:30:04 MDT
and don't forget this little ditty from David Hill:
On 25 Jan 2002 at 8:16, David Hill wrote:
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.
rhinoceros wrote:
> Back to god proofs and disproofs...
>
> [LhyR of Chaos]
> who says that the existance of god has to be attached to some reasonable consequence? perhaps i am misinterpreting, but by reasonable consequence, i infer that you mean, say, karma, or that when one "sins" there are repercussions.
>
> [rhinoceros]
> Any particular god, personal or inanimate, is in fact a new definition of a god. Apparently, proving that no gods at all exist would sound funny, because we would try to argue against a whole class of definitions we haven't even heard.
>
> But... when someone brings up a claim for the existence of a particular god, shouldn't he show that it matters in some way, empirical, explanatory, anything at all? If no consequences at all can be shown for the existence of a god, what would make it any different from any other story? On the other hand, if there is a claim for consequences, these can be subjected to scrutiny and evaluation.
>
> [LhyR of Chaos]
> well, that is only true if god cares to interfere with what is already going on. i'm not argueing that the judeo-christian god exists, nor that god is benevolent, nor that god is intelligent, nor omniscient, nor that god gives a shit what we do....
>
> [rhinoceros]
> Which brings us to the next checkpoint. Definitions of gods who do not interfere at all are safer from empirical scrutiny. (although they may be still subject to rational scrutiny or semantic analysis). Even the definition of the judeo-christian god has gone a long way to that direction, although there is still a problem of utility which keeps the church from going all the way to a god who does not interfere: If there are no practical consequences at all, the concept will not be as compelling to the "faithful".
>
> About the issues with a non-intervening god, more below...
>
> [LhyR of Chaos]
> just that an entity beyond our comprehension, existing outside time and all other dimensions we understand, exists.
>
> something cannot come from nothing. this is fact. therefore, as we exist, this proves that at one point in time (or feesably at the end of or before time) a god existed. it might not have been a sentient entity, but there at one time was a "god".
>
> [rhinoceros]
> I can read this in a different way. Let me play a little game of semantics. You say that "something cannot come from nothing, this is fact". Yes, this is an empirical fact so well established that we have made it a part of our rationality. When we are faced with something that contradicts it in physics, we immediately make up models which require a cause for that something. By doing so, we make a prediction that a cause exists and will be found. It has worked so far, barring some cases in the realm of quantum physics which still resist to give us causes in terms of the usual physical quantities we have been using. We still insist. Some researchers are even willing to give up the concepts of position, momentum, energy, or time as we understand them just to keep causality.
>
> Now, the game of semantics I promised: If there always has to be a cause in the material world we live in, we can assume an outside realm where it does not have to be so. An entity without a cause can exist there. A god. This entity is special because, although it does not need a cause itself, it did constitute a cause for the material world. Essentially, what this model does is addressing the probelem of the infinite causal chain of events by putting a black box at the end, one which somehow is not subject to causality itself.
>
> Of course, there are simpler ways to do just that without talking about a god. It is probably the mystery of this situation which conjures the word "god". Another approach would be investigating the origins of causality itself, either in the physical realm or in our brains.
>
> [LhyR of Chaos]
> if energy never goes away, that means that on a cosmic scale, nothing ever truly dies, it just transmutes. our bodies and consciousnesses may fall away and rot back to their original building blocks, but this doesn't mean it goes away. just that it undergoes radical change.
>
> next, envision what reality would be like outside of space and time. remove all the empty space from between the nucleaus and the electron cloud, from inbetween atoms, etc, and what is left is a matrix of energy. reinsert space/time, and that same entity exists, but has come to experiance all of its individual aspects subjectively for more perspective.
>
> [rhinoceros]
> That sounded interesting... Well... space, time, matter, energy, are all interconnected. The energy of an "electron cloud" is a function of its position... All these concepts come in a single framework, a single package, or else they lose their meaning.... the energy and time pair can be used as an alternative to the position and momentum pair for the description of an elementary particle. The energy and time pair is even subject to the same Heisenberg uncertainty relations as the position and momentum pair... Err... did I digress? I am not that good at poetry....
>
> [LhyR of Chaos]
> my actual theory is that god fractalized itself for the purpose of learning greater understanding. that god as a localized phenomenon doesn't happen, and if it ever should, would mean the end of reality as we comprehend it.
>
> well, i understand that this is an anthropomorphised view, but as a human entity i cannot conscieve of things in a fashion outside what i am capable of comprehending.
>
> [rhinoceros]
> Good, but why god? A theory such as "the world is one" (out of space) and "nothing never changes" (out of time) along the lines of what Parmenides was teaching long ago (thanks Blunderov) would look like a simpler start. Yes, a personal god equiped with a will, comprehension, and curiosity sounds somehow anthropomorphic, but I understand that if you start from such a "first cause without a cause" it should be self-motivated if anything at all was to happen.
>
> ----
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