rainbow walking

In the past few weeks there have been a number of topics dealing with PoE and the FWD. So I thought if I submitted a formal FWD it would engage lively discussion. I'm immensely interested in testing the postulates and arguments upon which my own world view is based. If they have holes I want to know where and what they are. The only way I know to find them is to challenge them as robustly as possible. I apologise if I'm being redundant or obtuse or just a pain in the ass but I really do want to know these things. The best way I know how to learn to be solid in my world view is to improve the reasoning upon which it is based. At this time I've zeroed in on both PoE and the FWD.

In as much as my last attempt to enjoin some lively discussion on the merits of PoE by submitting a formal FWD has been largely ignored, I have speculated that perhaps it was too cumbersome an argument, or too ironclad, or too embarrassingly erroneous, or too fraught with assumptions, or for some other unforseeable reason, so I've decided to re-frame it in a much simpler context to see if it will generate more interest. I like the way Clutch reduced the basics of PoE so I'm going to use that format to re-frame the argument.

The format I'm referring to is:

If X then Y



If not Y then not X

IF X THEN Y

1. Let X be an omnimax god.

2. Let Y be defined as follows:


If X existed one could reasonably expect to see that existence manifested in the creation of a universe that would last a long, long time from which a sentient being called man would arise such that X, with minimal effort of intervention, could instill in man a predisposition towards righteousness in such an unobtrusive way as to preserve the freedom and dignity of man and allow man to progress historically towards the gradual diminishment of evil and suffering by his own efforts and self determination.

If not Y then not X

diana

While I admired the precision with which you laid out your premises, the whole thing was a bit on the cumbersome side. It read like a legal document. I tried to get through it, as I often find your posts thought-provoking, but stopped struggling about half-way through.

I like the way you've shortened it. I'd say the opposing camp with answer with some form of "one could reasonably expect"? Who are you to put conditions on the doings of God?

Are you proposing with

that God could create men who are righteous but who also have free will? How so? By giving him the choice of choosing between two or more good things?

d

Clutch

Sorry, I don't see it.

If X then Y -- well, fair enough.

But now X is a god? "If God then..." ? That doesn't make much sense.

You must mean that X is "There is an omnimax god"

But Y is really unclear in any case. It starts with, "if X existed". Even cleaning X up the way we have, this still has "If X then Y" coming out as "If there is an omnimax god, then, if there is an omnimax god ..."

As for what follows that, I don't see the point. If I'm being obtuse, I swear that it's not on purpose! Your arguments have not lacked detail, but clarity; all I've been able to infer is their dependence upon two principles, repeatedly invoked:

1) If a god intervened to reduce suffering, then the evidence of the intervention would make it impossible freely to judge whether a god had intervened.

2) If a god did intervene, and this was obviously the case, then there would no longer be grounds for an atheist PoE.

But (1) is straightforwardly false, while (2) is true but trivial. By definition a counterfactual describes a situation which, if actual, would no longer be counterfactual!

That evidence of benevolent intervention would neutralize the PoE's force is exactly the point; since there is no actual evidence of benevolent intervention, the PoE's force is not neutralized. Whereas you seem to extract the opposite conclusion via reasoning that remains consistently out of reach for me.

rainbow walking

Hi Diana,
Thank you for the critique. I felt the whole artifice was too cumbersome too but couldn't see anyway around that until Clutch came along with a better format.

Diana: Are you proposing with



X, with minimal effort of intervention, could instill in man a predisposition towards righteousness in such an unobtrusive way as to preserve the freedom and dignity of man...


Diana: that God could create men who are righteous but who also have free will? How so? By giving him the choice of choosing between two or more good things?

rw: No, I'm proposing that this deity could have intervened early in man's history, say with the Jews for instance, instilled in man some predispositioning towards righteousness, (along with the residual effect of creating a parallel history of religious fervor), and just allowed things to run their course as they now appear to be doing. His intervention would have some effect, but over time the effect would wear thin, but not the predisposition towards righteousness, as it would prove its own value down through history...if that makes any sense. Man retains his dignity and self determination over the long haul.

rainbow walking

Hi Clutch,
I appreciate your patience and sharp incisive arguments. If I can stay focused long enough to clarify it, we may actually get to an argument. Whether or not it survives is another story.



Clutch: Sorry, I don't see it.

If X then Y -- well, fair enough.

But now X is a god? "If God then..." ? That doesn't make much sense.

You must mean that X is "There is an omnimax god"
But Y is really unclear in any case. It starts with, "if X existed". Even cleaning X up the way we have, this still has "If X then Y" coming out as "If there is an omnimax god, then, if there is an omnimax god ..."


Rw: I'm reaching for "if an omnimax god exists". Obviously I've contorted things so for clarity let X be simply "an omnimax god" and Y be "the following state of affairs would obtain"
So it should read if X (with X being an omnimax god) exists, then Y (with Y being) the following state of affairs would obtain." I hope that cleans it up a bit.


As for what follows that, I don't see the point. If I'm being obtuse, I swear that it's not on purpose! Your arguments have not lacked detail, but clarity; all I've been able to infer is their dependence upon two principles, repeatedly invoked:

1) If a god intervened to reduce suffering, then the evidence of the intervention would make it impossible freely to judge whether a god had intervened.

Rw: And there's good reason for that. I'm postulating an intervention from a historical perspective. In this way, there would have been a time in man's past when freedom of judgement would have concluded godlike intervention, hence the birth of religion and the instilled predisposition towards righteousness. But eventually, as historical man progresses with no further intervention, man would inevitably reach a place in his history where your objection obtains.

One thing I've noticed about the standard arguments for PoE is that defining Y necessitates the eradication of evil be an immediate result of intervention, but I see no reason why this should be the case for one to argue a FWD. It is logically possible that intervention in some past historical sense would eventually lead to the eradication of evil in the future. And there's some logical reasoning to support this. Let's call this the "chain reaction" effect.

Clutch:2) If a god did intervene, and this was obviously the case, then there would no longer be grounds for an atheist PoE.

Rw:Well, that's not my main thrust but I suppose you could isolate that particular interpretation from it based on our previous discussions. The point of this particular FWD is to incur this god's intervention in such a way as to allow man the dignity and freedom to self determine and take out evil along the way. I can argue this on the basis that a righteousness self determined is a better righteousness than one that's imposed and that an omniscient being would know this. I could derive further support for this from his omnibenevolence as being the reason he would allow man this luxury...along with the evil incurred in the process. That he would want man to attain a better form of righteousness...even if it hurts.

Clutch: But (1) is straightforwardly false,

Rw: Is this still the case in light of my having expanded on it?

Clutch: while (2) is true but trivial.

Rw: I concur on the basis of my explanation above. I've already conceded the triviality of that line of reasoning.

Clutch: By definition a counterfactual describes a situation which, if actual, would no longer be counterfactual!

That evidence of benevolent intervention would neutralize the PoE's force is exactly the point; since there is no actual evidence of benevolent intervention, the PoE's force is not neutralized.

Rw: Is PoE then an evidential argument? O'kay, for the purpose of this FWD, the existence of religion and all associated paraphenelia should suffice. Specifically the existence of Israel along with a 3000 year old prophecy that the Jews would be scattered, persecuted, murdered and abused and then regathered to remain a nation for the duration of man's history. That man has demonstrated a predisposition towards righteousness is also evidence. This should support the initial claim of intervention.

That evil and suffering should have been eliminated at the point of intervention is PoE's assumption and since I'm not arguing a PoE it needn't be argued. I'm arguing a chain reaction intervention that led man into the dark ages until his predisposition towards righteousness gained momentum and has, since brought us to where we are today. There are a lot of good reasons to argue that a great deal of suffering has been negated by man's historical climb out of the dark ages. Medicine, science and technology to name a few.

Clutch: Whereas you seem to extract the opposite conclusion via reasoning that remains consistently out of reach for me.

rw: But I'm not arguing PoE, I'm arguing FWD, so this rule doesn't apply to my argument. I'm only using the format to reduce the argument to its basics. It would be counter-productive to present a FWD as a counterfactual, except as a counterfactual to PoE. This particular FWD is designed to be consistent to this state of affairs...as are all such FWD arguments.

My final sentence read "If not Y therefore not X"

But the whole thrust of the argument was to show that the Y I described is consistent to this state of affairs.

So I could as easily have said: Y therefore X

Koyaanisqatsi

Well, I've learned my lesson and will leave the logical deconstruction to Clutch, , but it seems to me in a more general sense, you're arguing: Why couldn't an omnimax God augment "his" creation at any given time "he" chooses, so that the end result will be righteousness; sort of like injecting an antidote in order to cure a disease, yes? Presumably a disease that humans somehow created themselves as a result of their free will?

Is that the heart of it?

If so, then don't you immediately have a contradiction in the "omnimax" qualities of a god who did not in some way foresee this "disease" and intervene initially, at the drawing board phase?

The problem I always have with these arguments is the fact that intervention is not necessarily in question; god, apparently does intervene, which in turn means (or at least implies) that god is concerned with Man's progression toward righteousness (a common enough theme in the majority of the world's cults for acceptance, yes?).

So, rearrange the chronology a bit and that's where it all falls apart. You've got a god who is concerned about his creation progressing (shall we say) toward righteousness, yet he (apparently) created us unrighteous to begin with (otherwise why would he be concerned to the point of intervention later--some two or three thousand years later, no less, according to the christian cult--that we progress toward righteousness?).

Since god has the omnimax qualities and would therefore (presumably) know that creating us unrighteous to begin with would mean that he must later intervene, why would "he" create us unrighteous to begin with, if indeed he were concerned enough to intervene later to steer us toward righteousness?

Not to mention that the steering itself can arguably be construed as seriously disrupting (or impugning) our free will?

It's identical to saying, "I know when I created my robot it would fail after five years, so that I could then give it the choice of not-failing for all eternity."

Why in the world would it be important to me to create a robot that will knowingly fail, only to then intervene and give it the choice of not-failing for all eternity? So that the robot chooses non-failure?

Wouldn't that, in turn, mean that I, as the creator of the robot, place a priority on my creation to choose non-failure, and, further, wouldn't it also mean that the robot really had no choice at all so far as the failure was concerned, and that the only "choice" I am offering is a nebulus one at that, since they aren't actually choosing to not-fail, they are choosing to allow my intervention to stop them from failing; a condition I prewired to begin with?

So where is there any free will in there at all? I prewired my robots to fail so that I could then offer them a false choice of not-failing in the hopes that they will choose to not-fail? Why? Why would I do such a thing, especially if you throw in my omnimax ability to know beforehand which ones will choose to not fail and which ones will choose to fail long before I even create them to do just that?

This is, of course, precisely why the cults have to resort to the "who are you to question your creator" fallacy (or, worse, my nemesis, the "God moves in mysterious ways" stupidity); because the motive of the said creator makes no sense no matter how you look at it, including through omnimax "eyes" (a pop hit from the seventies).

If we truly have a "free will," then god cannot ever intervene (or even say anything to begin with, other than, "Hi, I'm your god and I created you, now go forth and multiply" -- this is why I love Dostoyevsky, by the way), nor can there ever be any punishment for our acting on that "free will," regardless of what god would want us to do, or else it isn't "free" or ours.

If you punish me for my decisions then I (ultimately) have no decisions; I have only operant conditioning.

I have heard it argued a billion times by cult members that "god doesn't want robots, that's why he gave us free will," but if god intervenes in our affairs or punishes us for our decisions or actions, then we are effectively nothing more than robots to god.

But, back on point, even if this god set us up and sent us on our way, the minute he intervenes at any point (either directly or indirectly) is the minute we no longer have free will and are merely being operantly conditioned by god.

If that is the case, then, again, we're stuck with the contradiction of an omnimax god who desires and creates autonomous beings, only to then remove that autonomy by intervening in our autonomy.

For us to truly have free will, this alleged god would have had to created us and then did nothing else, but watch what we did.

Unfortunately, though, for an omnimax god, this, too, would be fallacious, since it wouldn't be possible for it to create autonomous beings that acted in ways that god wouldn't already know of, not to mention the fact that there would be nothing of interest there for him to watch!

It would be like you or I watching the Burgess Meredith episode of The Twilight Zone for the ten billionth time (and even that wouldn't compare to an omnimax god, but for analogy's sake, it works). We would literally know every single thing (every grain of film; every shift of gray; every hair on his head; every word he will utter) so thoroughly as to remove all point to ever watching it again; all of which would be pre established in god's "mind" the second he created us (forcing us to go even deeper into the spiral and then ask, why, with such foreknowledge, would god ever create anything at all, or even continue justifying to himself his own existence)?

This is probably why Nomad (remember him?) used to always try the, "I don't see why god couldn't partially blind his foreknowledge in order to be surprised..." fallacy; my favorite.

No offense, Rainbow, but I think this is at the center of what you're trying to argue, too. In essence you seem to be arguing, "Why can't god intervene in a manner that preserves free will? Since god has omnimax qualities, that should mean he could figure out a way to intervene in such a manner, right?"

Well, to put it bluntly, wrong. He could not. Because that would be identical to him creating a stone he cannot lift; the central fallacy to omnimax claims (and, I would argue, the central fallacy that destroys deity, but, again, I'll leave the more technical interpretation to Clutch).

Jesus...this was a long diatribe. My apologies to all. Retirement did not suit me .

(and has also done nothing for my dyslexia, but made it worse, since I no longer have effective access to a spell checker before I post)

I should also addend a brief deconstruction of the idea that god created us righteous and we "went astray." All of the above applies to that scenario as well, due to god's omnimax abilities to foresee that there would be something in our design that would eventually result in our going "astray" from what god is, apparently, most concerned with (our going astray), and you're right back at the big fat fallacy farm.

Jayhawker Soule

What does it mean to be "consistent to this state of affairs", and how many "state of affairs" are consistent with Y? Your existence is fully consistent with any number of fantasies.

Based on what? What are the characteristics of reason when applied to the Supernatural? Is your Almighty God(s) capable of creating a qualitively different cosmos, and could one "reasonably expect" the attributes of that curious cosmos to similarly manfest the existence of X?

There is no 'reasonable expectation' derivable from the existence of X.

diana

The argument about what could have been has always struck me as weak and pointless. All the opposition has to do is say, "Yes, he could have, but he didn't. It is not our place to second-guess God."

IOWs, it always brings you back to dealing with a person who tells you he trusts his own mind only up to the point that it comes to questioning what other men have told him about a deity he cannot support with any evidence yet refuses to relinquish his belief in. (And some of them will tell you they don't even trust their own mind, period. But how do you argue with a person who isn't even sure he's arguing with you?)

d

rainbow walking

Hi Koy,
Your input is always appreciated and helpful. You’re probably wondering why I’m arguing these points. Why I’m taking the role of “bad cop”. For one, it’s a lot more fun and informative. I can’t begin to express, in human language, the liberty of thought that has accompanied my de-conversion. I spent years banging my head against these arguments as a theist and made narry a dent. Now, re-addressing these arguments from this position, arguments that eventually led to my de-conversion, is enabling me to grasp and appreciate their effectiveness in a whole new light. If they have holes I want to find and plug them. If not, I want to fully understand how to use them. I still have a lot to learn.

Additionally, as an atheist, I’m still wrestling with one final demon…the demon of “why?” Why existence in lieu of non-existence? At this point in my evolution I’m unable to shrug my shoulders and walk away with “brute fact” as a satisfactory explanation. So I’m exploring all reasonable possibilities.(hell, maybe the one I’m considering reasonable is just a flashback from cult indoctrination…shrug, it still has to be resolved, for me) I know there are many atheists who hold, for their own personal reasons, to various answers to that question. Non-theistic answers. As part of my self determination and expression I’ve got to address that issue and walk away with an answer I can live with. Religion is out of the question, but some type of super sentient explanation has not been entirely exhausted for me. So yes, there is an ulterior, personal motive behind my recent flurry of “bad cop” tactics. Am I the only atheist ever to cross this bridge?


Anywho, let’s get on to the business at hand…


Koy: Well, I've learned my lesson and will leave the logical deconstruction to Clutch, , but it seems to me in a more general sense, you're arguing: Why couldn't an omnimax God augment "his" creation at any given time "he" chooses, so that the end result will be righteousness; sort of like injecting an antidote in order to cure a disease, yes? Presumably a disease that humans somehow created themselves as a result of their free will?

rw: No, that’s not a cogent analogy here. I’m exploring this from a perspective completely devoid of Christian or religious interpretations, so such dogmas as sin, salvation, heaven and hell have no place in this FWD. A better analogy would be to compare the intervention to downloading an operating system patch that enables the system to heal itself from bugs and viruses that are sure to develop during the course of its problem solving computations, eventually leading to an evolved best operating system capability. I’m thinking of changing the name of this argument to “Self Determination Defense” to distance myself from these religious associations.


Koy: Is that the heart of it?
rw: It’s one aspect, yes, (analogous to the example I gave above)

Koy: If so, then don't you immediately have a contradiction in the "omnimax" qualities of a god who did not in some way foresee this "disease" and intervene initially, at the drawing board phase?


rw: That would only be true if we assume that self determination is a disease. I’m postulating that the intervention took place at a time in man’s early history that is equivalent to the “drawing board” phase. For one thing, I’m not proffering a deity that created man “poof” style and then had to fix a problem. That’s a cult perspective.

Koy: The problem I always have with these arguments is the fact that intervention is not necessarily in question; god, apparently does intervene, which in turn means (or at least implies) that god is concerned with Man's progression toward righteousness (a common enough theme in the majority of the world's cults for acceptance, yes?).


rw: Yes, and one that’s been contorted by those same religions for less than righteous reasons. Apparently they didn’t get the message.

Koy: So, rearrange the chronology a bit and that's where it all falls apart. You've got a god who is concerned about his creation progressing (shall we say) toward righteousness, yet he (apparently) created us unrighteous to begin with (otherwise why would he be concerned to the point of intervention later--some two or three thousand years later, no less, according to the christian cult--that we progress toward righteousness?).


rw: Again, that would be true if we allow these cults to shift our focus onto unrighteousness as the default condition. Their dogma holds that in a majority of cases where man makes a choice he will choose unrighteousness, (without their cult indoctrination), that it’s hardwired into him. I hold that the question is a red herring. I hold that man, at that stage of history, was essentially on the drawing board, that self determination without a predisposition towards anything was his natural state of affairs, and that such a being could have downloaded the programming necessary to predispose man in a specific direction. The religion and cults are a by-product, and also part of the equation, sort of like installing new software and having to reboot and thus having to wait until the system comes back online and assimilates the new program. Remember we’re dealing with historical man here. Also keep in mind that the universe is some 13.7 billion years old and likely to last 10 times that long. Man is a relatively recent phenomenon. 3 to 10 thousand years is a fart in the whirlwind compared to those numbers. Cult religion is just the re-stabilization phase of the intervention/download and will phase out, but the predisposition towards righteousness will continue to carry man forward long after religion has become nothing more than a quaint memory. If such a being did intervene it would have an impact that could stretch across thousands of years before the impact settles into its intended purpose without the side effects. Like dropping a stone into a pool of water. Eventually the ripples vanish but the water level has been raised in direct proportion to the weight of the stone that was dropped in.

Koy: Since god has the omnimax qualities and would therefore (presumably) know that creating us unrighteous to begin with would mean that he must later intervene, why would "he" create us unrighteous to begin with, if indeed he were concerned enough to intervene later to steer us toward righteousness?


rw: I hold such a being could have created material with a predisposition to form into complex particles and that sentience is the result of nature equipped with this predisposition. But sentience also stands contradistinctive to the particles from which it arose and thus an additional intervention was required to pass on the predisposition of righteousness, (which is a form of complexity), across the gulf between matter and sentience.

Koy: Not to mention that the steering itself can arguably be construed as seriously disrupting (or impugning) our free will?
rw: Yes it did have this initial effect, hence religious dogma, but it’s only temporary in the larger schematic. An unavoidable necessity. The predisposition towards righteousness will eventually stabilize mankind and these residual effects will be forgotten.

Koy: It's identical to saying, "I know when I created my robot it would fail after five years, so that I could then give it the choice of not-failing for all eternity."

Why in the world would it be important to me to create a robot that will knowingly fail, only to then intervene and give it the choice of not-failing for all eternity? So that the robot chooses non-failure?

rw: Man’s freewill translates to him having basically only two options in every situation: to accept or reject; on or off. That’s it. How he applies that choice becomes increasingly more complex in relation to the sophistication of the problem his choice is aimed at resolving. Example, a man finds himself in a situation where he’s un-employed. His predisposition towards righteousness will compel him to accept employment as a righteous option or reject it. This choice will then determine his next range of choices. His final decision about employment will entail the acceptance of one job to the rejection/exclusion of all others that were available, (assuming he makes the RIGHT initial choice).

Koy: Wouldn't that, in turn, mean that I, as the creator of the robot, place a priority on my creation to choose non-failure, and, further, wouldn't it also mean that the robot really had no choice at all so far as the failure was concerned, and that the only "choice" I am offering is a nebulus one at that, since they aren't actually choosing to not-fail, they are choosing to allow my intervention to stop them from failing; a condition I prewired to begin with?


rw: Not if your pre-wiring allowed the choice of accepting or rejecting it at any point, no. Note: I’m not arguing that man is FORCED by his predisposition, only compelled by it to make a choice. The compulsory aspect can be over-ridden at any point by the will.

Koy: So where is there any free will in there at all? I prewired my robots to fail so that I could then offer them a false choice of not-failing in the hopes that they will choose to not-fail? Why? Why would I do such a thing, especially if you throw in my omnimax ability to know beforehand which ones will choose to not fail and which ones will choose to fail long before I even create them to do just that?


rw: Your argument is based on Christian or religious interpretations of the intervention process. That needn’t be the case.

Koy: This is, of course, precisely why the cults have to resort to the "who are you to question your creator" fallacy (or, worse, my nemesis, the "God moves in mysterious ways" stupidity); because the motive of the said creator makes no sense no matter how you look at it, including through omnimax "eyes" (a pop hit from the seventies).


rw: It could be that these have rational grounds for justification but just improperly applied or skewed through cult indoctrination. Naturally when someone says “who are you to question” our predisposition towards righteousness will see that as a challenge to question further, simply because it’s the right thing to do. Healthy skepticism facilitates righteousness.

Koy: If we truly have a "free will," then god cannot ever intervene (or even say anything to begin with, other than, "Hi, I'm your god and I created you, now go forth and multiply" -- this is why I love Dostoyevsky, by the way), nor can there ever be any punishment for our acting on that "free will," regardless of what god would want us to do, or else it isn't "free" or ours.


rw: That depends on the level of a man’s knowledge at the point of intervention. Primitive man would not have been so adversely affected by it as modern man would. It also depends on the method of intervention. One of the things that emerge from these religiously interpreted myths is that this being was always careful to conceal many things about himself choosing rather to act through third parties.

Koy: If you punish me for my decisions then I (ultimately) have no decisions; I have only operant conditioning.

I have heard it argued a billion times by cult members that "god doesn't want robots, that's why he gave us free will," but if god intervenes in our affairs or punishes us for our decisions or actions, then we are effectively nothing more than robots to god.

rw: Again, that whole punishment thing is a purely religious translation of the intervention.

Koy: But, back on point, even if this god set us up and sent us on our way, the minute he intervenes at any point (either directly or indirectly) is the minute we no longer have free will and are merely being operantly conditioned by god.


rw: And that depends on WHEN he would intervene. Remembering man as historical being allows us to consider the effects from both an immediate perspective and a long range perspective. I’m beginning to realize that a lot of PoE is contingent on the immediate and ignores the historical perspective. The immediate effects could very well limit freewill in some ways, but we also have to remember that modern man has a more complex knowledge base, whereas primitive man might welcome the explanatory effect of such intervention and not feel so restricted in choice by it. It seems primitive man was prone to seeing gods in every bush, rock and volcano anyway, so any direct intervention wouldn’t surprise him as much as it would you or me. How man interpreted that intervention would be evidence that it didn’t completely render him robotic. I think this whole robotic thing is a reaction to the examples offered by proponents of PoE to justify the alternate state of affairs Y.

Koy: If that is the case, then, again, we're stuck with the contradiction of an omnimax god who desires and creates autonomous beings, only to then remove that autonomy by intervening in our autonomy.

rw: I hope something of what I’ve said thusfar helps to diffuse this argument. The effects of such intervention are contingent on the state of man’s knowledge when it occurs. Direct intervention today would have a devastating effect on historical man. The more sophisticated man becomes the more cautious such intervention must become or else modern man’s self determination is seriously effected. Primitive man’s self determination was affected but it didn’t have the same impact that intervention on that scale would have today. We’re just experiencing the residual after effects in religion and cult worship dogma which represent historical man’s best attempt thusfar to interpret that intervention. His interpretations have evolved along with his sophistication. It may be that my interpretation is no more cogent, but it is more cogent to modern man’s state of affairs.

Koy: For us to truly have free will, this alleged god would have had to created us and then did nothing else, but watch what we did.

Unfortunately, though, for an omnimax god, this, too, would be fallacious, since it wouldn't be possible for it to create autonomous beings that acted in ways that god wouldn't already know of, not to mention the fact that there would be nothing of interest there for him to watch!

rw: Now we’re getting to the part where we discuss modern man’s definition of omniscience.

Koy: It would be like you or I watching the Burgess Meredith episode of The Twilight Zone for the ten billionth time (and even that wouldn't compare to an omnimax god, but for analogy's sake, it works). We would literally know every single thing (every grain of film; every shift of gray; every hair on his head; every word he will utter) so thoroughly as to remove all point to ever watching it again; all of which would be pre established in god's "mind" the second he created us (forcing us to go even deeper into the spiral and then ask, why, with such foreknowledge, would god ever create anything at all, or even continue justifying to himself his own existence)?

This is probably why Nomad (remember him?) used to always try the, "I don't see why god couldn't partially blind his foreknowledge in order to be surprised..." fallacy; my favorite.


rw: I think this is a semantic abyss created by our current level of sophistication more than being based on logic or reason. How much is “all” in all knowing? How far does it extend into the future or does it extend into the future? Certainly inference is a method we use to extend our knowing or predictive powers into the future. Would a being capable of creating the materials of a universe have much more sophisticated inferential abilities? How can one KNOW in an absolute sense, the future? Unless it has already been established which, as you point out, defeats the necessity to do anything. I find this definition of omniscience to be counter-intuitive to logic and reason. Certainly a being who knows all that is necessary to bring about this state of affairs would have no problem predicting man’s historical flow, but I see nothing gained by either of us in extending his powers beyond logic and reason. As you say, it leads ultimately to the conclusion, “why bother?”. Which, of course, contradicts the fact that we are here and some sort of explanation is necessary for that “why” rather than “why bother?”

Koy: No offense, Rainbow, but I think this is at the center of what you're trying to argue, too. In essence you seem to be arguing, "Why can't god intervene in a manner that preserves free will? Since god has omnimax qualities, that should mean he could figure out a way to intervene in such a manner, right?"

Well, to put it bluntly, wrong. He could not. Because that would be identical to him creating a stone he cannot lift; the central fallacy to omnimax claims (and, I would argue, the central fallacy that destroys deity, but, again, I'll leave the more technical interpretation to Clutch).

rw: As I’ve argued thus far, that depends on many factors, not the least of which would be historical man’s knowledge base at the point of intervention. Man doesn’t even realize the extent of his freewill until he derives enough knowledge to extend his options beyond the immediate. Why do you think science is focused on PREDICTIVE characteristics of any particular hypothesis? Why do you think we’ve invested so heavily in PREDICTING the weather? There is a point in man’s history when intervention could occur without demolishing man’s history, just altering it.

Koy: Jesus...this was a long diatribe. My apologies to all. Retirement did not suit me .

(and has also done nothing for my dyslexia, but made it worse, since I no longer have effective access to a spell checker before I post)

I should also addend a brief deconstruction of the idea that god created us righteous and we "went astray." All of the above applies to that scenario as well, due to god's omnimax abilities to foresee that there would be something in our design that would eventually result in our going "astray" from what god is, apparently, most concerned with (our going astray), and you're right back at the big fat fallacy farm.

rw: And I agree with you Koy, I think religious interpretation has mucked it up and just flows along on the momentum of a ripple that it has absolutely no idea how to explain any other way. I think the basic predisposition towards righteousness can be seen emerging from that mess but that it will be awhile yet before the luggage gets left on the plane.

rainbow walking

CA: What does it mean to be "consistent to this state of affairs",

rw: The argument contains enough corresponding descriptors to be consistent with a normal range of states that are readily observable.

CA: and how many "state of affairs" are consistent with Y?

rw: Specific to this argument, I suppose, if you wanted to make an exhaustive comparison you could include many more details.

CA: Your existence is fully consistent with any number of fantasies.

rw: Well, let’s entertain mine for a moment and not multiply them beyond necessity. Do you have anything to add or detract from the argument in the way of logical discourse or are you just content to snipe hunt?


CA: Based on what?


rw: The remainder of the argument, what else?

CA: What are the characteristics of reason when applied to the Supernatural?


rw: Depends on your reasoning capacities, experience and knowledge base.

CA: Is your Almighty God(s) capable of creating a qualitively different cosmos, and could one "reasonably expect" the attributes of that curious cosmos to similarly manfest the existence of X?

rw: Why don’t you erect an argument to see?

CA: There is no 'reasonable expectation' derivable from the existence of X.

rw: Then you come to this forum without any reasonable expectation of airing your disagreements with those who think otherwise? Are we to infer from this that your presence here is unreasonable? Where would you be had a concept such as this never arisen in man’s conscious awareness to be discussed?