naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
30316 thread views
Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
...seems like a disagreement over the definition of "omnipotent". If omnipotent means "can do anything", I'd argue that "simultaniously existing and not existing" isn't a "thing". It's like the old question of whether God could make a rock he can't lift; the proper answer is mu, because "a rock he can't lift" is a category error. If I'm writing a book, relative to the characters it seems to me that I'm pretty clearly omnipotent, but I still can't make up be down or a = !a, because there's no conceptual validity to such linguistic constructions. I think most Christians, at least of the ones who understand the question and grasp the abstractions, would agree.
I am familiar with the argument, but its just redefining omnipotence. A truly omnipotent beingcould resolve whatever conceptual validity issues there are by changing the universe.
In your book, you could make up be down for example, pretty easily. Because you can define those terms in the fictional world. If God can't do that in the real world. He isn't omnipotent. Which is fine! Ridicuously powerful but not literally omnipotent shouldn't particularly be an issue.
I am familiar with the argument, but its just redefining omnipotence. A truly omnipotent being could resolve whatever conceptual validity issues there are by changing the universe.
I really don't think that's a definition of "omnipotence" that most Christians, past or present, would actually agree with, and if forced to use that definition, I think most would concede that the God they posit is not in fact omnipotent in this sense. I'd be very interested in examples of Christians arguing otherwise, if you've seen any.
In your book, you could make up be down for example, pretty easily.
I could very easily include the string "in this world, up is down". I couldn't describe the necessary causes and effects of such a change, because logically-invalid linguistic constructions have no necessary causes and effects. Any effects I then attribute to "up is down" in the story are not the cause or result of up being down, they're the result of my direct, arbitrary will.
Notably, the Christian idea that humans have a free will separate from that of God, common to most branches of the faith, logically depends on God not actually having this sort of relationship to our world; ditto for many other parts of Christian theology and philosophy. As I understand it, the Christian conception of God contains a lot of examples of him being shaped by the necessities and interdependencies of what is taken to be baseline, unalterable reality. All of these would flatly contradict the concept of omnipotence as you define the term, which is fair enough, but it is in fact just redefining omnipotence, and my impression is that their definition came first by a number of centuries.
God is truly omnipotent. When he says All is possible for the Lord, He is being literal. Just because we as finite moral limited beings cannot comprehend how He could do logically paradoxical things that is no bar to Him being able to do so. He is truly omnipotent.
While God says All is possible through the Lord, events in the bible and since and fundamental logic seem to indicate this cannot literally be true. God cannot make paradoxes. He has some limits. Therefore He is not omnipotent.
God is omnipotent but He cannot do certain things, but those don't count towards Him not bring omnipotent because they can't be done at all.
and 2) are I think reasonable approaches. 3) is I think a rationalization of two contradictory positions. Its a cop out.
Indeed, there are Christians who hold position 2) though it doesn't appear too popular. But I think Christians should hold position 1). Faith that what God says is true even if we are unable to wrap our minds around how. And many Christians claim to hold position 1) but when pressed with examples like the ones you bring up they revert to position 3). Because they cannot conceive of how God could do things they find logically impossible.
There are positions in Christianity which hold 1) to be true, but they aren't I think popular in modern times. Their solution to can God create a rock He cannot lift is: Yes, God can do the impossible in creating a rock that He cannot lift. And then he can do the impossible and lift it. For ALL things are possible through the Lord. He is not constrained by logic or anything else. I think 3) is a result of Christians finding it very difficult (and not unreasonably so!) to resolve the logical materialism they see around themselves with the true mystery of God as described in the bible. So this halfway house is created. Its not new, this debate is over a thousand years in the making.
If I create a simulation of a human society on a computer, am I an omniscient God relative to the simulated humans? In some sense I am--I could instrument the simulation as much as I like, inspect every aspect of it in a debugger, etc. In another sense, the amount of data involved likely overwhelms my ability to focus on every little detail. There'd almost certainly be things about the simulation that I was completely unaware of not because I was incapable of knowing but because I had no reason to put in the effort to do so. Do you think there an analog to this with omnipotence? Does a rock that God is "incapable" of lifting because the mere existence of that specific rock is so beneath Him that He can't be bothered to distinguish it fit?
If I create a simulation of a human society on a computer, am I an omniscient God relative to the simulated humans?
I think you're on the right track, separating access to data from retention of data. if the "simulation" is a single integer between one and three, I'd say you have both. If it's extremely complex, humans can have total access, but almost no retention. My understanding of the term "omniscience" is that it's referring to both perfect access and perfect retention.
Does a rock that God is "incapable" of lifting because the mere existence of that specific rock is so beneath Him that He can't be bothered to distinguish it fit?
This would seem to be a question about the hypothetical God's capacities, saying that he's not omniscient, and possibly degrading his omnipotence by his incapacity to aim or direct his absolute power. But saying that this would make him unable to lift a rock seems like linguistic confusion; the simplest way of describing this scenario is that he can lift the rock, what he can't do is find it, or notice it, or however we describe it being irretrievably outside his attention.
If you make a simulation simple enough, then it seems to me that you really can have complete omniscience and complete omnipotence over it in a very real sense, while still being unable to instantiate certain forms of illogical constructs. You cannot invent a story in your head that you can't change, because "story" necessarily implies "changable". You can't make a story where down is up in a meaningful sense; you can make a story that contains the string "down is up", but you can't rigorously describe the subsequent cause and effect, because invalid verbal constructions have no causes or effects.
This would seem to be a question about the hypothetical God's capacities, saying that he's not omniscient, and possibly degrading his omnipotence by his incapacity to aim or direct his absolute power. But saying that this would make him unable to lift a rock seems like linguistic confusion; the simplest way of describing this scenario is that he can lift the rock, what he can't do is find it, or notice it, or however we describe it being irretrievably outside his attention.
I don't think I explained what I meant here. It's not that He is incapable of finding or noticing it in my formulation, but that He chooses not to because for whatever reason He doesn't deign to grace it with His attention. Now that I say it like that, I guess I'm asking if an omnipotent/omniscient God can have free will.
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
...seems like a disagreement over the definition of "omnipotent". If omnipotent means "can do anything", I'd argue that "simultaniously existing and not existing" isn't a "thing". It's like the old question of whether God could make a rock he can't lift; the proper answer is mu, because "a rock he can't lift" is a category error. If I'm writing a book, relative to the characters it seems to me that I'm pretty clearly omnipotent, but I still can't make up be down or a = !a, because there's no conceptual validity to such linguistic constructions. I think most Christians, at least of the ones who understand the question and grasp the abstractions, would agree.
I am familiar with the argument, but its just redefining omnipotence. A truly omnipotent beingcould resolve whatever conceptual validity issues there are by changing the universe.
In your book, you could make up be down for example, pretty easily. Because you can define those terms in the fictional world. If God can't do that in the real world. He isn't omnipotent. Which is fine! Ridicuously powerful but not literally omnipotent shouldn't particularly be an issue.
I really don't think that's a definition of "omnipotence" that most Christians, past or present, would actually agree with, and if forced to use that definition, I think most would concede that the God they posit is not in fact omnipotent in this sense. I'd be very interested in examples of Christians arguing otherwise, if you've seen any.
I could very easily include the string "in this world, up is down". I couldn't describe the necessary causes and effects of such a change, because logically-invalid linguistic constructions have no necessary causes and effects. Any effects I then attribute to "up is down" in the story are not the cause or result of up being down, they're the result of my direct, arbitrary will.
Notably, the Christian idea that humans have a free will separate from that of God, common to most branches of the faith, logically depends on God not actually having this sort of relationship to our world; ditto for many other parts of Christian theology and philosophy. As I understand it, the Christian conception of God contains a lot of examples of him being shaped by the necessities and interdependencies of what is taken to be baseline, unalterable reality. All of these would flatly contradict the concept of omnipotence as you define the term, which is fair enough, but it is in fact just redefining omnipotence, and my impression is that their definition came first by a number of centuries.
I think there are roughly three options to take:
God is truly omnipotent. When he says All is possible for the Lord, He is being literal. Just because we as finite moral limited beings cannot comprehend how He could do logically paradoxical things that is no bar to Him being able to do so. He is truly omnipotent.
While God says All is possible through the Lord, events in the bible and since and fundamental logic seem to indicate this cannot literally be true. God cannot make paradoxes. He has some limits. Therefore He is not omnipotent.
God is omnipotent but He cannot do certain things, but those don't count towards Him not bring omnipotent because they can't be done at all.
and 2) are I think reasonable approaches. 3) is I think a rationalization of two contradictory positions. Its a cop out.
Indeed, there are Christians who hold position 2) though it doesn't appear too popular. But I think Christians should hold position 1). Faith that what God says is true even if we are unable to wrap our minds around how. And many Christians claim to hold position 1) but when pressed with examples like the ones you bring up they revert to position 3). Because they cannot conceive of how God could do things they find logically impossible.
There are positions in Christianity which hold 1) to be true, but they aren't I think popular in modern times. Their solution to can God create a rock He cannot lift is: Yes, God can do the impossible in creating a rock that He cannot lift. And then he can do the impossible and lift it. For ALL things are possible through the Lord. He is not constrained by logic or anything else. I think 3) is a result of Christians finding it very difficult (and not unreasonably so!) to resolve the logical materialism they see around themselves with the true mystery of God as described in the bible. So this halfway house is created. Its not new, this debate is over a thousand years in the making.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If I create a simulation of a human society on a computer, am I an omniscient God relative to the simulated humans? In some sense I am--I could instrument the simulation as much as I like, inspect every aspect of it in a debugger, etc. In another sense, the amount of data involved likely overwhelms my ability to focus on every little detail. There'd almost certainly be things about the simulation that I was completely unaware of not because I was incapable of knowing but because I had no reason to put in the effort to do so. Do you think there an analog to this with omnipotence? Does a rock that God is "incapable" of lifting because the mere existence of that specific rock is so beneath Him that He can't be bothered to distinguish it fit?
I think you're on the right track, separating access to data from retention of data. if the "simulation" is a single integer between one and three, I'd say you have both. If it's extremely complex, humans can have total access, but almost no retention. My understanding of the term "omniscience" is that it's referring to both perfect access and perfect retention.
This would seem to be a question about the hypothetical God's capacities, saying that he's not omniscient, and possibly degrading his omnipotence by his incapacity to aim or direct his absolute power. But saying that this would make him unable to lift a rock seems like linguistic confusion; the simplest way of describing this scenario is that he can lift the rock, what he can't do is find it, or notice it, or however we describe it being irretrievably outside his attention.
If you make a simulation simple enough, then it seems to me that you really can have complete omniscience and complete omnipotence over it in a very real sense, while still being unable to instantiate certain forms of illogical constructs. You cannot invent a story in your head that you can't change, because "story" necessarily implies "changable". You can't make a story where down is up in a meaningful sense; you can make a story that contains the string "down is up", but you can't rigorously describe the subsequent cause and effect, because invalid verbal constructions have no causes or effects.
I don't think I explained what I meant here. It's not that He is incapable of finding or noticing it in my formulation, but that He chooses not to because for whatever reason He doesn't deign to grace it with His attention. Now that I say it like that, I guess I'm asking if an omnipotent/omniscient God can have free will.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link