Olorin

I started a thread at another site:

<a href="http://www.half-empty.org/servlet/LoadPage?pageID=idea&ideaid=2939" target="_blank">http://www.half-empty.org/servlet/LoadPage?pageID=idea&ideaid=2939</a>

I would appreciate comments/criticisms regarding my and others' lines of reasoning. It might seem evident, but if not please keep in mind that I have never read any books on logic, nor studied anything related to "thinking".

Regards
Olorin

jpbrooks

I'm sorry, but I had to copy your post into my text editor. Here it is:

Is the Christian God a robot?
 
This is not an attempt to prove the Christian God's non-existence. It is an attempt to prove that that being, or at least the concept of said being, lacks free will. All references to "God" imply the Chistian God.
The bible claims that one of the properties of God is omniscience, ie all-knowing. This implies knowledge of everything there is to know, i.e. propositions involving the past, present and future.

1) If God exists he is omniscient.
2) If God is omniscient then he knows his future actions.
3) If God knows his future actions, then he can not decide against performing these actions.
4) God is forced to perform actions he foresaw he would perform (from 2 and 3).
5) God has no free will (from 4).

Please refrain from asking me why I wanted to prove this; this thought just popped into my head this morning. If you have any comments/criticisms, I'd appreciate them.

One question that could be asked at this point is what is the origin of the"force" in 4) that "forces" God to perform actions that He foresaw? I.e., who actually predetermines God's actions?

[ February 13, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Olorin

Perhaps the fact that God would not be omniscient if he never foresaw his actions? In order to remain omniscient, a characteristic of God, he is by logic and definition forced to perform his future actions. Else he would be non-omniscient, and non-existence (by (1))

Ender

I hope the following may be of use to your argument for atheism:

Originally posted <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=21&t=000202&p=" target="_blank">here.</a>

The fundamental reason why Sartre claims that God does not exist is the very concept of God is a self-contradiction. In his phenomenological description of ontology, there are two poles of being: pour-soi (being-for-itself) and en-soi(being-in-itself). God, in his philosophy, is BOTH pour-soi and en-soi, a 'Being-in-itself-for-itself.' Yes, quite a mouthful! As an 'in-itself' God is the concept of the perfect being, a complete existing entity that is whole in himself and independent. God is also a 'for-itself' that He must be absolutely free and not subservient to anything, even reason or ethics. This synthesis is logically contradictory and Sartre concludes that such a being must be denied.

The extreme philosophy of Sartrean existentialism contributes to his atheism- were God to exist, it would be an automatic limitation of man's freedom, or transform it to a fiction.

Since the belief of God has been prevalent all over the world and in the past, Sartre cannot simply wave his and and wish God away. He asserts further that that mankind invents God in order to posit a meaning in the world. Man is forever defining himself, his place in the world, in order to account for a pervasive cosmic meaninglessness. Thus, Man invents a big-brother figure concept that takes care of the unknown mysteries- that includes the origin of the universe.

In the end of his book "Being and Nothingness" Sartre is led to the pessimistic conclusion that man is a "useless passion" since he desires to achieve for himself the impossible "being-for-itself-in-itself" synthesis . Man is essentially a desire to be God. In addition, the beauty of it is he fails gloriously, each and everytime, a one hundred percent failure rate.

What follows are relevant excerpts from my exhaustive exposition on Sartre's phenomenological method:


This entails atheism since nothing causes 'being-in-itself' which is a brute fact of existence. A brute fact is simply IS, without a sufficient reason or a cause, or any other distorting anthropomorphic terms we blind ourselves to the truth.

The effort going from the notion of necessity to the existence of necessity is mistaken for the source of being.

• One- the very notion of a necessary being entails a contradiction: the total awareness of perfection and identification of that perfection.
• Two- since we are unable to move from the logical to the ontological (ontological argument of God).

This is a direct allusion to Leibniz’s effort to reason that the idea of a necessary being entails its existence (a necessary being, in its possibility and description as necessary, must absolutely exist. Sartre objects, restricting the level of understanding to the level of knowledge. In other words, possibility as an ideal is not the possibility of being. Ontological or real possibility exists only to the extent being maintains the possibilities in existence. Possibility follows existence, not vice versa! This seems Sartre’s atheism is specifically addressed to a particular theism (that we can have a clear and distinct concept about the a priori possibility of God. in order to conceive of the impossibility of God is to assert to have a clear concept of the nature of God. Similar to the conception that a circle-triangle is impossible because we have a clear idea of a triangle and a circle.)

~WiGGiN~

jpbrooks

According to the definition of God that I am accustomed to, logic, goodness, truth, etc., are aspects of God's "nature," and are thus neither transcendent to God, existing in some realm beyond Him, nor created by Him.
So, by this definition, if it is logic that "forces" God to perform acts that He foresaw, that "force" would not be external to God.

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Jamie_L

I would think if there was a God, he exists outside the bounds of our 4 limited dimensions (space + time). He would see all events in all places at all times laid out before him, but he would not necessarily be limited to an existence within them. Being stuck in 4 dimensions myself, it's hard from me to imagine what exactly that would be like. So, I don't think the God-as-robot idea holds.

Of course, I also don't believe there's a God at all. I'm just pointing out that I think the premise of this argument has holes.

Jamie

Tani

by definition, since there is one god, there is only one future (multiple futures necessitate multiple gods), which entails that there is only one course of events that is possible (ie, it is necessary for that course of events to happen). omniscience merely entails the knowledge of that course of events. the gist of the problem is not that god lack freewill due to his omniscience. rather, it is the precondition of omniscience, the necessity of one future, that entails god lack freewill.

jpbrooks

Sorry, Tani. I'm not sure I follow your line of reasoning here.

Can you please explain why "multiple futures necessitate multiple gods"? And how are "multiple futures" even possible in our universe anyway? The fact that there can be only "one future" doesn't imply that God is not free.
Perhaps you are alluding to the concept of "parallel universes".
However, even if "parallel universes" are possible, it is still not clear why that would necessitate a multiplicity of gods.

Again, I'm puzzled as to how this follows from what you stated above.

Moreover, assuming that the sequence of future events is "necesssitated" even for God, borders on Fatalism.

Fatalism fails because it can only escape falsification by maintaining vague tautologies such as, "what was 'meant to be' is what has occurred".

Of course, if God is also the Creator of the universe, then He not only foreknows the course of future events; He actually determines it.

So, if, as you suggest, the future is already "necessitated", who made it "necessary"?

[ February 15, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Tani

by the very definition of existence, if you can exists in multiple place in one time, you have multiple existence. if god has two contradictory choices to chose from, he could only make one choice and therefore would have one course of future. if he can make two contradictory choices, then he has multiple existence (multiple gods, as they are not in one). he cannot be still in one unity because contradiction entails inexistence, just as existence, as part of god, which is absurd (pointless to even argue if god is a contradiction). if we don't even agree on the same definition, then the word "existence" is an empty rhetoric. if one future does not imply the lack of freedom, then we don't even agree on what freedom is. and again, freedom becomes a empty rhetorical device, we were't actually communicating.

let's put it in other words: "what was 'god's plan' is what has occurred." i already said the precondition for omniscience is fatalism. by denying fatalism, you deny omniscience as well.

the worth noting line is that "he actually determines it." you are suggesting there is only one future, out of many possible futures... you are going in circles, and have completely lost track of the original argument: if he determines it, he cannot know it before hand, and if he knows it before hand, he didn't determine it. "knowing the course of future before hand" has a precondition of "having the future exist just as presence" while "determing the furture" has a precondition of "no future exists as presence."
the two natures are contradictory and that is the original arguemnt. they are by nature contradictory, if you want to prove the otherwise, you have to define them otherwise.

this is very self defeating for you to suggest that... to let necessity be necessitated would be self-referencing, which is a paradox, if we don't even agree on the nature of necessity, everything we say that "must" or are "necessary" are all sophism.

we, just to point out a few, don't agree on what it means by existence, freedom, and necessity (all of which are the crux of the argument), there is no point to continue as we aren't even talking about the same thing in any sense of those words.

jpbrooks

Tani,


This is not necessrily true if God can create an "alternate" universe in which His second choice could be realized.
(Again, assuming that "multiple universes" are possible) there would be no contradiction involved, for example, in God allowing a cat to live in one universe, while allowing an identical cat to die in an "alternate" universe, unless you argue that one of the two "alternative" futures for the cat would be inconsistent with God's plan.
It is not clear to me why two alternative sequences of events must be mutually contradictory in order to be different.
But in no case would more than one God be necessary.

Again, given the possibility of "multiple
universes", it is not clear to me that the concept of "multiple futures" necessarily involves a contradiction. If it does, then perhaps you can provide an argument or explanation as to why it does.

Then what do the terms "existence" and "freedom" mean to you? Only one course of events is possible for our universe in any case. So it is difficult to see how that mere fact can be the answer to the very question(s) about freedom that it raises.

But Determinism is not equivalent to Fatalism. To hold that God (pre) determines events is to espouse a form of determinism. This is not the same as espousing Fatalism, which holds that the choices that any agent (including God) makes have no effect on the course of future events.

False dilemma.
How is it even possible for God to determine the course of future events without knowing in advance what those events will be? And how could an omniscient God not know the events that He has determined?

That line of argument only applies to beings like us that are not omniscient and that don't delimit reality.

Huh?
How is merely seeking the reason for an allegedly "necessary" state of affairs paradoxical? It would only be "self-referencing" if you assume that the "necessary" state of affairs is "self-existing" (precluding any more fundamental cause).

I concur. If our disagreement over the definitions of basic terms in this discussion cannot be resolved, then further deliberation on this matter would be pointless.

[ February 16, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>