One-eyed Jack

Theli, I am using the standard-issue Christian God as the basis for my discussion. All the attributes are indeed speculative and assumptive, as is the very existence of God. You, me, J.L. Mackie, and others agree that this definition leads to contradictions--a lot of Christian theists disagree very strongly, using the Bible as justification, and my post above really speaks more to those who agree with the Christian definition of God than otherwise.

Theli wrote: "I never understood this. We have free will in heaven, and can't commit evil. But, when you ask a Christian why God didn't make all people good on earth, he claims that it would make everyone into robots. Wouldn't that mean that we become robots in heaven too?" Exactly my (actually Mackie's) point! Nice restatement.

There's an interesting and quite scholarly refutation of the idea that free will justifies the existence of evil--it's <a href="http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/frame1.html" target="_blank">here</a>. The author is Dr. Niklas Berggren, and on his main page he has links to a bunch of really excellent essays on theism, atheism, and problems of theology.
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Addendum, later: Theli, I think the conflict between omniscience and omnipotence is avoided by the claim that God cannot act against His own nature (or, if He is taken to be perfectly logical, cannot perform a logical impossibility). This usually comes into play when someone asks if He can create a stone so heavy that He cannot lift it--the theologian smirks and replys that God cannot abrogate His own power. I think the idea that if God has always known everything that will ever occur, including His own actions, then to "change His mind" and do something of which He did not have foreknowledge would be just like making a stone so heavy it abrogated His power to lift it: a logical contradiction of the nature of God.

Hey, listen, I don't agree with this stuff any more than you do; I'm atheist and rationalist to the core. I'm trying to argue within the mythos, taking the theist premises as true and seeing where they lead.

Cheerio!

[ July 24, 2002: Message edited by: One-eyed Jack ]</p>

Keith Russell

Greetings:

Mibby: YHWH didn't, because YHWH doesn't exist.

Omniscience trumps free will.

Either way (omniscient or less-than-so) 'God', as Christians see Him, would be a mighty unjust being.

Keith.

Taffy Lewis

mibby529,

There is what has become a classic solution to this claimed paradox.

Either God can do the logically impossible or God cannot. Normally theologians say that God cannot do that which is logically impossible; however the solution works either way.

First, suppose God cannot do that which is logically impossible.

Now consider the following two statements:

(1) It is logically possible that (a)God is omnipotent and (b)there exists a stone too heavy for God to lift.

(2) It is not logically possible that (a)God is omnipotent and (b)there exists a stone too heavy for God to lift.

One of these statements must be true and both cannot be true.

If omnipotence does not require the ability to do that which is logically impossible and (1) is true then God can create a stone too heavy for him to lift and still be omnipotent. The reason is that (1) declares that such a state of affairs is logically possible.

Now if omnipotence does not require the ability to do that which is logically impossible and (2) is true then God can be omnipotent and not be capable of creating a stone that he cannot lift. The reason is that if (2) is true then it is logically impossible that God be omnipotent and there exist a stone he cannot lift. We have assumed here that omnipotence does not require the ability to do that which is logically impossible.

Lastly, suppose that omnipotence includes the ability to do that which is logically impossible. If God has this ability then he can create stones he cannot lift and then lift them. This is because it has been assumed that he can do that which is logically impossible.

So whether or not omnipotence includes the ability to do that which is logically impossible, omnipotence avoids the paradox of the stone.

mibby529

I was critiquing the Bible as a work of fiction.

Engineer's perspective: If you build something, and it has a flaw, you fix it. Every architect, engineer, and computer programmer knows to do that.

Father's perspective: No father would condemn any of his children to something like hell. Fathers punish their children, sure, but no father would kill his children (flood) or send them to an eternal prison (hell.)

Either way, Yahweh, if he does exist, must be either the most foolish or most sadistic being I have ever heard of.

luvluv

I argued this before on here very recently, but I think a possible answer to the question lies in God's ability to exist in all times at once. God's omniscience, as far as our human actions go, may not spring from a pre-ordained knowledged before creation, but from his ability to observe our freely made choices at all vantage points in history.

In other words, God doesn't "know" that I will purchase a DVD player in two weeks. He is already "there" two weeks from now, watching me make a free-will decision to purchase a DVD player at the "same time" that He is right now watching me wrestle with whether or not I will buy a DVD player. In other words, it's possible that God's knowledge is not "all in His head" so to speak, but a product of his ability to simeltaneously "be in" all times at once.

His omniscience may not come from a pre-ordained plan of what He wants us to do but from his current observation of everything we have done, are doing, or will do in his "boundless Now."

The omniscience and free-will argument only works if God is constrained by linear time, and Christians (and Jews) have long argued that he does not.

[ July 24, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

Philosoft

This is simply ad hoc reasoning, Luv. There is no explanation of how this is possible, no example of a thing that accomplishes it, just an assertion that the God in question has this quality.

<strong> How does God do this? Does he have a billion TV screens and a billion eyes? What units of time is he seeing? Minutes? Picoseconds? Planck-length units? Show your work, Luv. This is one of those extraordinary claims Sagan was always going on about.

<strong> Is this supposed to make sense?

<strong> Christians and Jews haven't argued anything; that's what's so frustrating. They just have a bunch of ad hoc apologetic tid bits that are wholly meaningless with respect to all human experience. Honestly, sometimes I can't believe we argue so deliberately over attributes of a concept that doesn't even exist.

[ July 24, 2002: Message edited by: Philosoft ]</p>

Synaesthesia

Jack,
Ha ha, well said. That has always been my favorite refutation of the argument.

We don't even need to hold that God knows every move, just that he's not a bloody idiot.

One-eyed Jack

Luluv, I think your view is considered heretical by mainstream Christians--or at least by those who take their Bible straight with no chaser.

The Bible says, "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world." Acts 15:18

Here are quotes from a couple of Christian sites:

"The word 'omniscience' comes to us via Latin and means 'all-knowing.' Omniscience is knowing the past, the present, the future, and the possible. God knows these things equally well and perfectly. Wisdom is rooted in knowledge....God has perfect knowledge...God sees and hears everything...This perfect knowledge includes perfect knowledge of each individual person and of all human experiences. God knows from all eternity what shall be in all eternity, the entire plan of the ages and the part of every man in that plan." (Emphasis added)

The following quote is from quite a lengthy essay by Joe Nelson. He includes quite a lot of scriptural justification for his view. Source: <a href="http://www.founders.org/FJ46/article1_fr.html" target="_blank">here</a>

"The word omniscience is not, strictly speaking, a biblical term. The word itself is not found in the Bible. It is a philosophical/theological word that has come into wide usage because, like the word trinity, it correctly describes the biblical evidence. The word means to see or know all things. For God, if this doctrine is true, everything is eternally 'present.' I have recently been going through a box of old newspaper clippings from earlier years. To my astonishment, I had forgotten, not only many things that happened to me, but many of the people involved. Time dims our remembrance of much that has happened. God is not like that. He always knows what is past, present, and future, if he is omniscient." (Emphasis added)

So the problem stands, I think: He knew when He created the Universe every detail that would transpire, including Satan's rebellion, mankind's fall, and all suffering and evil as well as all good and beauty. So why did the Big Guy let evil in?

Theli

Jamie_L...

As this 4D anology is both unsuggested and onproven, I will take this as a hypothetical statement. Moving on.

This renders his psuedo-4D nature superflous.
If god changes something in the universe, his previous knowledge of the future (prior to the change) was false.
His knowledge of the future will always be false, until he stops changing it.

Theli

One-Eyed Jack...

Hi, thanks for replying.

I would change "the very existence of God", to "the original definition of God". Other than that, I agree.
Many christians who believes in those original attributes usually, after a few pages of discussion try to blur them out. By saying that god knows everything except this and that.
And god can do everything except this and that.

About nature and god.
I think I've posted this before on this thread.
But -potence in correlation to nature can be described as "the ability to do everything your nature provides, but the inability to do what your nature prohibits.".
And for god to be able to do everything, he cannot have a nature, as this prohibits his actions. But he must also have a nature to provide him with ability/power.
Omnipotence is therefore a contradiction.

Yes, that's a good method. When it comes to god it's only possibilities and probabilities.
I've been wrestling with the "outside of time" and psuedo-4D arguments myself. But I couldn't make them fit.