Wizardry

Thomas Metcalf,

This is a horrible attempt to parody my argument. For one, the opening premise does not in any way resemble my definition of learning, nor is it a cogent definition in its own right. Performing an action is described as performing an action. Period (although hopelessly circular). The rest of the definition is tautological. Could performing some action be defined as performing some action that a being can't perform? Nope, so that statement is useless as a defining quality.

When defining learning, a reference must be made to the existing knowledge pool of a being, for obvious reasons. If you already know that the Capital of the United States is Washington D.C. and I don't, then if we each gain that fact, say by reading it, then I have learned something, but you haven't, because you already knew it. Therefore, it is necessary to reference a specific knowlege pool when defining learning. However, it is not necessary to reference a specific beings capabilities when discussing the execution of an action. Your attempt to translate my opening premise into one which has already been shown to be flawed by diana fails because it is not applicable, and thus the rest of your post fails, as I will detail below.

Secondly, there is a disconnect between your first sentence and your second and third, because the second and third are basically copies of mine, but the first failed to reproduce the lines along which I developed my argument, so I'll just show how McNothing fails under the argument I put forward in my last post.

McNothing is incapable of performing any action, by definition. As a simple example, I can move a chair from one end of a room to another. However, McNothing cannot do that. Therefore, since McNothing cannot complete a logically possible task, he is not omnipotent. Q.E.D.

Replace McNothing with McEar in the preceeding paragraph, and you'll see why McEar is also not omnipotent.

The general form of my definition of omnipotence is that if a logically possible being can perform an act, then an omnipotent being can perform that act. In my post I argued that since no logically possible being can perform an action (gain a fact that lies outside the knowledge pool of an omniscient entity), then the inability of an omnibeing to perform that action does not preclude its omnipotence. This form of argument also holds if the action is "create a spherical cube" or "make a rock that both exists and does not exist simultaneously". In other words, I merely argued that since learning requires the existence of a fact outside the fact pool of a given individual, and that by definition no such facts exist, then asking a being to gain such a fact is essentially equivalent to asking it to make a square circle. The limitation does not lie in the inability of the omnibeing to create something or gain a fact, but on the inherent contradiction in the thing to be created or the fact to be gained.

You'll notice that in your parody of my argument, once you eliminate the redundancy of the first premise, action X can easily be defined. I used the example of moving a chair, but there are an almost infinite number of examples that could be used. However, there is no fact X that can be similarly disproved. As a challenge, think of a fact that a possible being could know, but would lie outside the knowledge pool of an omniscient being, and post that fact as a refutation.

The whole point is that in the case of McEar and McNothing, action X is actually a logical possibility (as much as moving a random object is a possible action), whereas in my example, gaining a fact that lies outside the knowledge pool of an omniscient entity is not a possible action (because there exist no such facts).

...which would make the definition of omnipotence, "A being is omnipotent if the being can perform any possible task that could be performed by an omnipotent entity." Now that is a circular definition.

I still contend that those statements are not impeachments because they are reflexive, not becasue we just make special exceptions for them in the definition.

Thomas Metcalf

Wizardry :

I'm really not understanding where we're not communicating about the definitions of omnipotent. I'd say every contemporary philosopher of religion who actually is familiar with this stuff rejects your definition. Flint and Freddoso noted the problem in "Maximal Power", which came out decades ago. I hope you provide a definition of "omnipotent" ...

I can perform "to learn." I'm logically possible. Is "to learn" not an act?

I agree that the inability to perform "to gain a fact that lies outside the knowledge pool of an omniscient entity" does not preclude omnipotence. Yet I believe the different action "to learn" is required by omnipotence. They're two distinct actions; that is, some people perform one without performing the other.

Please state your definition of omnipotence in the following form:

a person S is omnipotent iff for every task T of the form 'to V' where V is some verb, ...

And replace the ellipsis with some statement.

No it wouldn't. I gave you a necessary condition for the definition, which in no way provides a sufficient condition.

the_cave

Oh, I don't know that this is impossible; there are certain relatives of mine whom I both love and fear. That is, I would not want to cross them, but I still hold them very dear in my heart.

I am not terrified of them--that I think is an improper definition of biblical "fear". The "fear" that is commanded is a strong form of respect.

Fiach

Koya writes:

Reading something that confirms beliefs you were already inculcated with hardly passes for study, don't you think?

I could be wrong, of course, so please demonstrate where I am. I don't mean to belittle your beliefs, just the seriousness with which you claim you've studiend them.

I agree with the first statement. Reading material that you know in advance, for the sole purpose of reinforcing your pre-held beliefs, is not study. It is simply reinforcement or confirmation.

Study is reading something of which you are unfamiliar or sceptical and are looking for any evidence that might change your mind. I studied the Bible as a child. Comming from a secular family, I wondered why most of my mates believed in this Jesus stuff. Since the majority believed, I worried that I was missing something. So when I set out to read the Bible I studied it. I was looking for something to give me a reason to believe in God and Jesus. Therefore, I kept getting caught on the mistakes, the two different versions of genesis, the moral repugnance of Noah's Flood, the injustice of inherited sin.

In short, my study of the Bible showed me information that the indoctrinated Christian fails to see or fails to mentally process it beause it is dangerous to cherished belief. I was not looking to confirm my family's, 4th generation agnosticism/atheism. I already was doubtful about gods and demons. I studied it because I was looking for evidence that I might be wrong. Instead it showed me that Christianity was more irrational and baseless than I thought it was. I went from doubting God to not believing in God at all. To me JHWH/Trinity was self-contradictory, mean, vindictive, homicidal, and fundamentally evil.

When proselytisers go around trying to convert you or I, they don't really want us to read the entire Bible they tell us what verses in John and Corinthians that are more palatable and avoid the disgusting, contradictory, erroneous, and frankly evil parts. Who are they deceiving? Me or themselves?

Fiach

JCS

Well at least you recognize the futility of such an endeavor, as all attempts I have witnessed were as you described, "feeble".


While I also think such debates are healthy but I believe that they bear absolutely no fruit when in contact with a hardened theist (at least in my experience).


You are aware that this usually provokes orchards of that non-bearing fruit you referred to, right? Well since we are exploring our reasons for why we are or why we are not.

I'm not, because.....


For me it is the lack of evidence that there is an all knowing, all powerful god out there. It's not the thought some unsubstantiated entity might judge us, or punish us for our wrongs. The fact that compels me more than anything not too believe in IT is the fact that like all religions, it is just more of the same, assertions and presumptions, supported only by the desire for it too be true. I find it amazing that people believe that because Jesus (who thinks he may or may not have been God) was willing or not to die for what he believed, was any shape or form a greater sacrifice than a soldier who volunteers to give his life in defense of his country and family. To me that is just as great if not greater love/sacrifice. Anyway I have plenty more reasons other than that to disregard your presumptuous/preposterous religion.

And that is just a short snippet of why I don't believe what you believe. I do look forward to the responses.

AmericanHeretic

originally posted by Diana:

Originally posted by the_cave:

I find this disturbing for two reasons.

1) Love does not equate to fear.

The example of your family member you purport to fear is a false deduction. You fear adverse consequences to unethical actions you (hypothetically) imply considering perpetrating against them. You do not fear the person, as you said, but rather, you fear their responses to your own deeds, should you cross them. You get the exact same thing from strangers, and the law enforcement community, whom you share no love with. Thus, your association between love and fear is disproven.

2) Fear does not equate to respect.

You use the words "improper definition of Biblical fear". This is what I call "Christian speak". Fear no longer means fear, now it means deep respect. This is absurd. If we extend this "logic" we arrive at the point of "fearing" atheletes for great sports achievements, "fearing" artists for creating works of great beauty, and "fearing" our friends who give generously to charities.

"Commanded".... "strong form of respect".....do you have that for a crack-head with a pistol pointed in your kid's face who is "commanding" a loving tribute of some free cash?

Here's an example of an atheist using your words correctly:

I have a "strong form of respect" for Steven Jay Gould.

He "commands" respect for his actions, his works, his dedication to the truth and ability to forward the noble efforts of science because he dedicated his life to these things and enhanced and furthered the development of human understanding of reality. His life made a difference, and that commands respect.

Clutch

You can perform "to make a sphere". You're logically possible. Is "to make a sphere" not an act?

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Clutch :

Of course it is. I'm not sure where you think you're going with this. Here's Wizardry's point:

Let me take the liberty of expanding Wizardry's statement into a definition. (D1) A being S is omnipotent iff for any task T, if there is a logically possible being that can perform T, then S can perform T.

The act in question is "to learn." The being in question is I, or almost any other human. Ergo, by D1, an omnipotent being can perform "to learn." But it is not the case that God can perform "to learn." Therefore, by modus tollens, God is not omnipotent, and by a further application of modus tollens along with the premise "If God exists, God is omnipotent," God doesn't exist.

So if you accept D1, then you must accept that God cannot possibly exist. Your only alternative, in my view, is to offer a competing definition.

Wizardry

Thomas Metcalf

Of course, but as I thought I pointed out before, when you learn, it is an entirely different act than if I learn or if God learns, because the verb to learn implicitly references its subject in addition to the explicit reference.

See, unlike the act "to make a sphere", in which the subject acts on the object (the sphere), "to learn" acts on the self. That additional parameter makes the learning act different from agent to agent. So learning for you or me is easy, because we don't know most of the knowlege that can possibly exist, whereas it is actually impossible for an omniscient being, because it cannot add elements to its knowledge bank because that bank already contains all elements by definition.

I'll try an analogy: It is as if I asked both you and God to affect something outside a specified region in space. For you, I define that space to be a sphere of 1 mile radius centered around your house, whereas for God I assign the entire universe. Now you can complete your task without much trouble, I'll wager, but since there really is no "outside" the universe in a spacial sense, it is impossible for God to complete his task, so it would really be unfair to say that he had failed. Now, to make the analogy more accurate, if the mapping from beings to regions was injective or one-to-one so that there would be no need to mention which region to perform this operation on, then it would be omitted from everyday language so as not to be apparant that these were actually different actions.

God can't learn because of his coincident properties prohibit learning as a logical possibility, not because he can't do something that another logical being could do.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Wizardry :

I don't think the fact that it implicitly references its subject should make any difference. Are you saying an omnipotent being doesn't have to be able to perform any action that implicitly references a subject? Would you please provide me with an explicit definition of "omnipotent," one that doesn't allow for McNothing to be omnipotent?

"To learn" is one action. "To learn something not known by God" is a different action. I say no one needs to perform the latter to be omnipotent, but the former is a different action.

Then the actions in question are different actions. I'm saying if there's an action such that I can perform it, and an action such that God can't perform it, and they're the same action, then God isn't omnipotent.

McNothing can't do anything because his coincident properties prohibit doing something as a logical possibility, not because he can't do something that another logical being could do. Might McNothing be omnipotent?