Is there a God?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 1:24 am

1) Not at all. Though, omnipotence can be used to jury-rig omniscience by declaring, "I am going to make the universe do X and only X." So, yes, omnipotence can be used to create a situation in which you have omniscience, but unless you actually exercise omnipotence to create that situation you aren't omniscient. You could also exercise omnipotence to complete the task, "I am going to make myself know everything about the universe." So I suppose it's even easier than I thought. But either way, you have to actually take those actions. You may have fox's cunning, but you don't get the intelligence bonus until you cast it.

2) The advancing understanding of science has shat all over traditional cause and effect. Even conservation of energy is one of those sketchy, macroscopic approximations that quantum mechanics violates all the time. I don't know about your specific example, because that... has a cause of sorts, it's just non-deterministic. But the general sentiment is very much correct; quantum mechanics says fuck you all the time to needing a strict cause and frequently does things solely for no reason at all other than fuck you, Newton.

3) Magic. If you keep bitching, we have kindling and flint. They make persuasive arguments for heathens like you. (I don't actually care enough to even try to come up with what the believer's response to this would be: probably something like "no sickness in heaven." More importantly, heaven has a huge number of babies. It's probably just one giant nursery. Hell sounds like the better option, sometimes.)

4) An omniscient god fucks with free will. You cannot have omniscience and free will. Omnipotence has little to do with that, though the fact that the Judeochristian creator is both the one that is omniscient and the one who set all events in motion does cause problems in that specific case. He knew Joe Blow was going to hell before creating the universe, and still created the universe. This is what modern philosophers call a dick move.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 1:38 am

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 1:50 am

why are people asking frank of all people to explain christianity. that's like asking tzor to explain abortion.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 2:03 am

Well, no. Frank has at least done some research into Christianity.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 2:27 am

So here's a thought experiment. Imagine omniscience was tweaked to be this:

1.) Omniscience cannot know the outcome of non-causal or truly random events. So while you could predict which way the dice were going to land, you could not predict when or where virtual particles would pop into existence nor which particular atom of a radioactive substance would decay.

2.) Omniscience however does allow you to know what will happen if a certain event occurs.

Or if that's too abstract, imagine if you the DM were randomly assigning treasure to four hoards, each with one magical item in them. There are four categories of possible magical items: weapons, cloaks, rings, and armor. Each magical item category has four possible results in it. So if you roll a weapon, you can get your choice of a Fire/Water/Earth/Air sword. Roll a ring, you get your choice of a Dragon/Monkey/Ox/Tiger ring. etc. The hoards don't have their stuff assigned until the player actually

Each of the magical items will affect a player's performance in a different way. For example, the armor will increase the defense and the weapon will increase offense.

This means that while you don't know how a player will perform in the combat that happens after raiding one of the hordes, you will know how they perform if they get one of the 16 items. So while you don't know which scenario will happen you will know what will happen if a scenario happens.

Now all that said, if omniscience was redefined to be that, could free will still theoretically exist with an omniscient being? I don't think it would in humans since humans are deterministic even if the universe isn't, I just want to know if it'd be possible for beings that were designed differently.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 2:37 am

To summarize: "what if omniscience is a fully-mapped decision tree of the universe?"

Well, that's kind of like defining omnipotence as "being really powerful, but still having things you can't do." If you define omnipotence that way, sure, the stone paradox (which is already semi-sketchy) disappears right out. But you wouldn't call that omnipotence because it's not "all-powerful." If omniscience is just "knowing the universe's decision tree," then there are solvable questions that god cannot answer and we just don't call that omniscience. We call that "knowing a lot of things, but not knowing all the things."

I.e., you're taking the godly out of god, at which point yes: the contradictions start to disappear. So does god, though, which means what's the point? What you've really shown is that very, very large amounts of regular knowledge and free will are consistent, which is pretty reasonable.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 3:52 am

You are deterministic, made of deterministic parts that work in a deterministic way. Further, all properties that determine what sort of "you" you are deterministic properties, including properies such as "free will". You have "free will" in that you freely decide what you will do in the way that you decide to do things. The fact that you are made of deterministic parts that behave deterministically in no way diminishes the fact that you decide (or even, dare we say it, determine) to do what you'll do, for much the same reason as your inability to decide to do what you wouldn't do fails to disprove your ability to decide to to anything in the first place. God has nothing to do with it.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 3:52 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:2.) What's the big deal about First Cause anyway? There are events in the universe that are (as far as we know) literally uncaused like radioactive decay.

First Cause was conceived of as an argument in one form or another over a thousand years ago. Religious people are in general not very good at recognizing when new information invalidates their arguments.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:3.) How in the fuck does a soul work anyway? If you get shot in the head and die horribly apparently your soul still has 'your' personality and identity and whatever minus brain damage but if you get shot in the head and die several years later after slowly descending down the ladder of brain damage your soul reflects you being brain damaged?

Nope, your soul in the second case is magically totally fucking in it's previous non-braindamaged state for the whole time. Unless of course they turn to Jesus after brain damage, in which case it's the brain damaged version or something.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 4:29 am

DSMatticus wrote:If omniscience is just "knowing the universe's decision tree," then there are solvable questions that god cannot answer and we just don't call that omniscience. We call that "knowing a lot of things, but not knowing all the things."

Well, the follow-up question I have is: is omniscience even logically possible? How do you 'know', for example, non-causal events without eliminating non-causality? What happens between intervals of Planck time?

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 4:45 am

If non-causal events exist, then eliminating non-causality is not problematic. If non-causal events don't exist, not knowing about them is not problematic. If anything happens between intervals of Planck time, then knowing about it isn't problematic, and if nothing happens in those intervals, then not knowing about the things that don't happen during those non-existant periods is equally non-problematic.

The real objection to God is that there's no evidence for the proposition, not that it's logically impossible or anything.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 4:47 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:If omniscience is just "knowing the universe's decision tree," then there are solvable questions that god cannot answer and we just don't call that omniscience. We call that "knowing a lot of things, but not knowing all the things."
Well, the follow-up question I have is: is omniscience even logically possible? How do you 'know', for example, non-causal events without eliminating non-causality? What happens between intervals of Planck time?

Fucking Magic of course. It's logically possible, but in reality it's impossible, because you can't actually know things without a physical brain.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 5:13 am

Ancient History wrote:Well, no. Frank has at least done some research into Christianity.

frank is also a liar. then again so is tzor.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 5:54 am

Grek wrote:You are deterministic, made of deterministic parts that work in a deterministic way.

Undoubtably, but we're discussing the religious implications as opposed to the practical/scientific side of things.

Lago wrote:is omniscience even logically possible? How do you 'know', for example, non-causal events without eliminating non-causality?

Well, back to your decision tree. In the non-omniscience example ("I have a perfect map of the universe's decision tree"), you have no idea which path things will take because they are random and as of yet undetermined. Which is why it doesn't immediately conflict with the idea of free will/change your own destiny/whatever the fuck. In the omniscience example ("I have the route that will actually happen from the previous decision tree,") it turns out everything is already decided and anything that we call random only appears random to us.

The best example I can propose of this is an electronic RNG: the device is seeded at creation. To us, as we roll the dice, each individual roll appears random. But if you know the seed and the mechanism, which are bother determined at the creation of the RNG, every result that will come after is purely deterministic and the randomness is only an illusion.

If omniscience is possible, then that immediately implies that we are a seeded RNG and every result our universe churns out was determined at creation. The randomness is an illusion we experience due to incomplete information, but an omniscient entity has that complete information and perceives no randomness. Which doesn't logically contradict anything directly.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 9:30 am

If you have future vision and fucking magic, it is logically possible to know when non-causal events are going to happen and what those events are going to be without there actually being any cause in the past. Because you see the future events those noncausal events will cause. Omniscience and a universe without first causes just requires a fully mapped decision tree from both ends of the time axis at once. If such a thing were even possible, free will as envisioned by non-Calvinist Christian theologians cannot possibly exist - but that is why the Reformation happened.

Of course, there's the whole Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proves that in reality it is logically impossible to know everything regardless, but uncaused events do not by themselves sink the notion. They just take the "First Cause" argument into the backyard and shoot it.

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 11:44 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Of course, there's the whole Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proves that in reality it is logically impossible to know everything regardless, but uncaused events do not by themselves sink the notion. They just take the "First Cause" argument into the backyard and shoot it.

As far as omniscience with respect to our universe is concerned, Incompleteness is only an issue if God exists exclusively within the universe.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 12:26 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Of course, there's the whole Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proves that in reality it is logically impossible to know everything regardless, but uncaused events do not by themselves sink the notion. They just take the "First Cause" argument into the backyard and shoot it.
As far as omniscience with respect to our universe is concerned, Incompleteness is only an issue if God exists exclusively within the universe.

Doesn't help. It is literally not possible to know that there isn't anything that you don't know. So even if you knew "everything", since you still couldn't know that there wasn't anything left to learn, so the final answer of whether you knew everything or not would remain unknown.

There is therefore at least one fact that cannot be known, regardless of whether you are a magic omniscient being or not. The idea of a literally omniscient God does not fail on Gödel's first incompleteness theorem (that no system can identify all truths about itself from within itself), it fails on the second (that no system can demonstrate its own consistency).

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 4:18 pm

The system of God + universe can't prove the consistency of God + universe, but it could prove the consistency of universe with respect to God.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 5:16 pm

[quote="FrankTrollman]Of course, there's the whole Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proves that in reality it is logically impossible to know everything regardless, but uncaused events do not by themselves sink the notion. They just take the "First Cause" argument into the backyard and shoot it.[/quote]

The Incompleteness Theorem only rules out a consistant formal system from being able to arrive at all true theorems. Presumably, whatever system hypothetically provides God's omniscience is inconsistant in some regard.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 6:08 pm

Grek wrote:[quote="FrankTrollman]Of course, there's the whole Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proves that in reality it is logically impossible to know everything regardless, but uncaused events do not by themselves sink the notion. They just take the "First Cause" argument into the backyard and shoot it.

The Incompleteness Theorem only rules out a consistant formal system from being able to arrive at all true theorems. Presumably, whatever system hypothetically provides God's omniscience is inconsistant in some regard.[/quote]

It's still logically impossible for you to know whether there are things you don't know that you don't know. Actual omniscience is not logically consistent.

Even if you're a being from outside time that knows everything about the universe as it will ever be and ever was, you still wouldn't know if some other being from even farther outside time was going to retroactively wreck your continuity sandcastle. It is simply not possible to know whether you've accounted for things you don't know that you don't know.

Omnibenevolence isone of those things that can't even be defined, so whether it's impossible or not from a logical standpoint is something that we can't even have a discussion about. But both omnipotence and omniscience are not logically consistent premises.

-Username17

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 6:41 pm

Omnibenevolence isone of those things that can't even be defined, so whether it's impossible or not from a logical standpoint is something that we can't even have a discussion about.

We totally can have discussions about Omnibenevolence - we're in the midst of one right now. But as this very thread illustrates so nicely, any such discussion negatively impacts the amount of good in the world. Thus even the mere consideration of Omnibenevolence results in the opposite of the intent, and so I can only conjecture about the amount of harm the actual existence of such an attribute would cause.....

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun Nov 06, 2011 12:30 am

Not quite sure where to put this, but pretty sure some people will find it amusing...

Random Internet Joke wrote:The light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in frustration, as she missed her chance to get through the intersection, dropping her cell phone and makeup.

As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up..

He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk, so naturally....I assumed you had stolen the car."

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sun Nov 06, 2011 3:14 am

Ancient History wrote:Well, no. Frank has at least done some research into Christianity.

What, you don't think I haven't done any research into abortion?

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sun Nov 06, 2011 3:27 am

By the way, discussing God on this forum would be just as moronic as an attempt to have a discussion on the Parallel Universe - String Theory Hell you should recall the moronic diatribes about FTL information transfer, which sounded as though two scientific fundamentalists were having a religious war.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Nov 06, 2011 7:26 am

See, unlike the Christian God, String Theory might be real. Probably isn't, but it might be. It's not logically impossible and is consistent with our measurements. So are an infinite number of other interpretations, but it is a possible solution.

Omnipotence and Omniscience are contradictory, and thus a God who possesses those traits is not a possible answer to anything.

-Username17

K · Post by K » Sun Nov 06, 2011 7:52 am

I simply cannot reconcile that any being worthy of worship would create such a poorly-designed world. You don't even need to disprove "all-good," or "all-knowing," or "all-powerful" when the criteria of minimal competence has not been met.

The fact that religious texts read like fanfics does not help that issue at all.

That being said, I'm as tolerant of religion as I am of S and M sex; I don't mind that people do it, but it's not something you should do in public out of simple politeness for other people.