John Page

You place too much faith in logic to tell you the truth. In fact, logic can be used to derive paradoxical results. Truth (for humans) is a subjective value of the human mind derived by comparing one entity with another and assuming them to be equivalent.

I find the following entertaining (but not necessarily true) :

1. Reality outside the imagination is just itself, it contains no contradictions.
2. All things containing contradicitons are therefore product of the imagination.
3. Definitions of god (by the relevant religion) that contain contradictions are therefore gods of the imagination only.
4. Definitions of gods that do not contain contradictions may be real outside of imagination, but their existence requires evidence the same as for any other belief or hypothesis.
5. Is the Higgs boson a god?

Cheers, John

Zar

You're dead in the water right there (which might explain why no one else seems to have engaged you on this point.)

Do you believe I ate a beef sandwich today? After all, it is logically possible. (In fact I had a chicken caesar salad...but then again, although this is a fact, my saying so doesn't make it necessary for you to believe it, does it?)

Also, not only do not all logically possible events and things actually have to exist, but there are even more possibilities that, even if they did exist, will never be known by countless people. Again, my eating a chicken caesar salad today my be completely beyond anyone's ability to verify, confirm or disprove, making it unknowable. If eating lunch can be so easily beyond our grasp, so much the harder for less mundane objects and events.

advocate_11

The suggestion in the context of this thread, I believe, was that if all logically possible universes are real, then in another universe there was someone that was in every other respect identical to yourself, expect that they ate a beef sandwich for lunch.

Yet to the topic in general, if true, it would be largely uninteresting unless there is some means by which a being in another universe can manipulate the contents of another universe. That is of course unless I am missing something.

davidm

John Page writes:

"You place too much faith in logic to tell you the truth."

Isn't logic based on reason and rationality, as opposed to faith, which is belief in the absence of evidence? And isn't it true that atheists scoff at theists precisely because theists believe in the absence of evidence?

There is strong, circumstantial evidence to believe in the plurality of worlds, having nothing to do with pure logic. Over the last few decades, the plurality of worlds has been a growth industry. Vic Stenger argues for them on this Web site. David Lewis argued for them in his 1986 book. Max Tegmark, a physicist, argues for them. David Deutsch, a quantum computer expert, argues forcefully for a quantum multiverse. Alan Guth argues for them. And on and on.

Advocate_11 writes:

"The suggestion in the context of this thread, I believe, was that if all logically possible universes are real, then in another universe there was someone that was in every other respect identical to yourself, expect that they ate a beef sandwich for lunch

."Yet to the topic in general, if true, it would be largely uninteresting unless there is some means by which a being in another universe can manipulate the contents of another universe. That is of course unless I am missing something."

You're not missing anything. You're right. The point is that it may be possible to detect these other universes. Therefore it is not necessary for their inhabitants to manipulate our own world. Tegmark, at least as of 1998, believes he has a falsifiable theory of all mathematically possible universes instantiating actual universes. If so, reality is vastly larger than we believe it is.

John Page

Predicate logic is based on two a priori axioms (although some say they are merely definitions or assumptions), the Law of Identity and the Law of Non-Contradiction. Whither then is reason or rationality in predicate logic? Some logics may be internally consistent - but a logically possible god by definition would also be....

BTW I totally agree with you about evidence and lack of evidence.

Cheers, John

[ June 22, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]</p>

tronvillain

I have no problem with the argument, since I am not going to bother with the old "the universe is everything there is." I simply see no reason to accept the third premise.

davidm

We would have to accept the third premise if it can be shown that all logically possible universes exist. I don't say it can be shown, but it might be possible. If so, we would have to accept premise four, I guess. I don't see anything unsound about the structure of the argument.

Even ignoring the "all logically possible universes" scenario, there are so many ways a god or god could exist, even in our own world. We certainly don't have to bother with the traditional definitions of God. What if a programmer wrote code creating a class of cellular automata that evolved over many generations and became self-aware? It's a reasonable hypothesis. She would be god to those entities. They would dwell in an entirely digital, mathematical environment, whatever that may mean. Maybe occasionally the programmer slips in some extra code, nudging evolution here, giving tips on how to behave there ("scripture"). The digital beings hypothesize the existence of an "analog" world with a deity. Eventually a class of digital scientists comes along devoted to thoroughly investigating and cataloguing their environment. They scoff at the notion of an "analog" world. They characterize the notion as incoherent. What could a hypothetical analog world mean to entirely digital creatures? Their problem would be indistinguishable from ours in imagining a supernatural realm. The scientists would adhere to a school of philosophy called "metaphysical digitalism." The theistic apologists would lumped into the school "metaphysical analogism." Yet in this situation mirroring our own, the latter would have a more correct grasp of the world then the former.