malpensante

wiploc:
i don't think christian god is fair either, i was just making the point that a multiverse god isn't worse, at least in this respect.

to say that any physically possible universe requires some minimal evil is compatible with saying that before the fall (which is a cronological part of the universe, but not all of it), or heaven (which is a spatial part of the universe, but not all of it), or god (which is a characteristic of the universe, but not all of it) is free of evil. the requirement is that some part, not all of it, be evil.

Wiploc

Cool.


But there's no reason to believe that. And you've conceded two possible universes without evil:

1. God could have ended the universe before the Fall.

2. God could have started the universe just as people arrived at Heaven.
crc

malpensante

wiploc:

yes, but a paradise universe does still have its tree of knowledge of good & evil, and a heaven universe still has the same characteristics as the heaven from times before the fall, from which an angel of evil fell. so, in a heaven universe there is still the seed of evil lurking.

Philosoft

Obviously, I disagree. Still. If God allows evil actions, it follows that a multiverse in which all SOAs obtain has evil actions. Thus, a multiverse-God has guaranteed evil actions will occur; the probability of an all-good-action multiverse is zero. A single-universe-God, however, has a nonzero a priori probability of creating a universe wherein only good free-will actions are done. One of these scenarios is compatible with Christian doctrine, and one is not. By the way, is there any reason I have repeated myself three times now and yet you continue to handwave over my argument? Just curious.

Liebniz was grasping at straws. It is neither a priori true, nor provable that this universe contains the least amount of evil.

It doesn't appear you are philosophically justified in believing this. It certainly isn't an obvious implication of the definition of "multiverse." Nor is it clear what mechanism might act as a limiting factor.
Clever, but no. It is both a self-depricating stab at my woeful grasp of classical philosophy (soft philosopher), and an indication that I largely pursue philosophical knowledge in the relatively anonymous realm of the internet (software philosopher).

I think I like your exposition of my username better.

malpensante

philosoft:
i am convinced that i understand your argument and you don't understand mine. yours is that a multiverse god has no option but to make evil, and a monouniverse god has a hope that evil will not occur. mine is that indeed a multiverse god has no escape but to create evil, but in this respect it is equal to the monouniverse god, for god created evil. some say that god actually created things which seem evil to us but are actually good. but to me, it is the same as creating evil. some say that god is in everything and there is nothing outside of god. to me, that means that god is also in evil. adam & eve were programmed to be curious, an emergent property of which is to desire the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good & evil, and to me that means that god programmed history to contain evil. a god that has a hope that evil will not occur, but can't stop evil from happening is not a truly omnipotent god. in short, god does create evil, no matter what probability he has of making an all good world, whether he has zero or non-zero probability of doing it (actually, the retrospective probability of the happenning of something that has already happenned is 100%, so the retrospective probability of god doing at least one minimally evil world is 100%). i have taken your own terms into account, sorry i didn't before.

actually i am philosophically justified in believing that probably all physically possible universes possess evil & good: information, the physical quantity that pervades all biological processes, is, at least from a multiverse point of view, a physically fundamental quantity insofar as it has some physically measurable properties with significant consequences in at least some set of possible universes, or parallel universes. now, the physical quantity of information is related to intelligence, and probably in some sense there is no information without intelligence. further, intelligence is related to ethics and morality, and probably in some sense there is no intelligence without ethics and morality. therefore, probably, in some sense, there is no physically possible universe without good & evil. in the multiverse view, every parallel universe is a physically possible universe.

Silent Acorns

This sounds really muddle-headed to me. You say,

1) information is the physical quanity that pervades all biological processes
2) the physical quantity of information is related to intelligence
3) intelligence is related to ethics and morality
4) therefore it is impossible for any possible universe to be without good and evil

Sorry, but I don't follow this at all. I have many questions:

1) are you saying that information is limited to biological processes? If so, why?
2) what do you mean when you say "information is related to intelligence"? Are you saying that information can not exist without intelligence?
3) Similarly, how is intelligence related to ethics and morality? Are you saying that intelligence can't exist without ethics and morality?
4) what do you mean by "therefore, probably, in some sense, ___ is impossible"?

Philosoft

Malpensante,

I'll wait for your reply to Silent Acorn's post to avoid rehashing any material, as he has effectively pre-empted my questions.

Darth Dane

"Darth dane:
even if god is outside of time, for him to have free will depends on his possibility to change any instant in the universe, and the according adjacent instants too, in order to make the changed instant consistent with our subjective lawful flow of time"

Why does it have to be consistant? God is allpowerful

", but for him to be omniscient while doing this, would require for him to know what happens both if he changes that instant and i he does't, which is equal to seeing both universes simultaneously, which applied to any choice in any instant, leads back to a god of the multiverse."

Twofold answer:

First I've thought of a possibility that will fit in, I think...
Ok, as I've written earlier I believe that every man or woman has inside of themselves that which is God, or that which Connects us. If God as the allpowerful being, just watched, did absolutely nothing, just watched, and we then as humans with conciousness and knowledge of this setup, had freewill to shape that which is, as we wanted it. God is just watching what will happen, but we determine what will happen, as we can see when we choose to post here or not. If you post, people will most likely respond, if you don't post you know that that won't happen, but something else will, perhaps you go to the kitchen for a snack, or whatever.
Yogis have said for ages that through the mind can you control the universe, but you need to practice, just like learning a new skill at work, or bicycling. Since many of us don't have this control, we can't have absolutely freewill, only partially. Partially because we do know the effect of doing one in comparison with another. But not across the universe, our minds haven't trained for that knowledge and knowhow. But we affect the whole universe never the less, as the chaos theory suggests.
Maybe this could explain karma, as the yogi's say also work under laws.
But notice this, God is just watching all of this, he is detached from that which is our world, but still connected because he created everything....if the bible as one source amongst many suggests.

Second, I do believe in a multiverse God, why Not? God is allpowerful, for him to juggle billions of universes, is as easy as talking.





DD - Multiversial Spliff

excreationist

I think that without systems that can decode and encode information, there is no information. I think that information is basically code where symbols represent something other than themselves... e.g. the spoken or written word "cat" representing a cat-type object. And there would usually be some purpose for the existence of the information/code. I don't believe in Plato's Idealism(?) where ideas can just exist eternally in another realm independent of whether intelligent beings have ever thought up those ideas or not. This is a philosophical thing really.

malpensante

darth dane:
welcome to the club of sympathizers for a multiverse god who overcomes the paradox of simultaneous omniscience and free will. though i think god could be a little impotent just as well as he could be detached.

silent acorns & philosoft:
i'm not saying that info is limited to bioprocesses, i am saying that bioprocesses are limited to info, or can all be viewed as infoprocessing.
information is a function of a physical thing. something can inform or not, depending of the context in which that thing is. the likelihood of information existing and perduring in an entropic universe depends on that information serving, if any other, at least the function of generating and preserving information (learning and memorizing, in more anthropomorphic terms), and this is what i call intelligence, that is why info & intelligence are related. intelligence, i claim, is limited to bioprocesses.
now, in an entropic universe for intelligence to exist, it needs to replicate itself, for statistically, any one copy is very bound to disappear for whatever reason. the coexistence of these intelligent copies in a functional manner, so that they accomplish their purpose of perpetuating intelligence, instead of contributing to their faster extinction, requires some emergent physical processes in turn, which anthropomorphically can be called ethics and morality.

now, the key concept here is one which i have omitted so far: information may be a fundamental physical process, if only because its functions are what make the multiple universes (or, if you don't like multiverse jargon, the many scales and sections of the universe), self-similar, and knowable, which is what we see right now.

my claim again: probably all physically possible universes require at least some ethics and morality in them. a compatible claim is that perhaps all physically possible universes require at least some intelligence in them.

(philosoft: are we cool on the "multiverse god & evil" subject?)