Jobar

So you are saying that God has *no* free will, and cannot truly choose other than what is?

Then you deny omnipotence.

Philip Osborne

Because the spinner has to be able to land on every single point and points have zero width. How would it be possible to say that the spinner was actually on .35 when there are an infinite number of points between .35 and any other point?

I don't see why we have to be concerned with what is in between .35 and any other point. Suppose I have a spinner with 10 sections, numbered 1-10. I don't need to determine the number of spaces between section 4 and section 6 to determine whether or not the spinner landed on section 4. So to introduce the fact that there would be an infinite number of points between .35 and any other point does not seem to bolster your argument.

Sincerely,

Philip

K

Philip:

Maybe I should rephrase this.

You claim that the spinner is pointing to .35. Now move the spinner an arbitrarily small amount. That movement can be as small as you want it to be. Now to get to it's new position, it has traversed an infinite number of points. So how can you say that the spinner was pointing to .35 and not one of the other infinite points that were traversed in that infinitesimal move? It doesn't matter how small you make the move, you always traverse an infinite number of points in that move.

You seem to be treating the points as if they have infinitesimal width. They don't. They have zero width.

Jobar

I want to slightly restate the thread title here. *If God has free will, can he conceive of evil?* Before He created the universe, did He realize the fact that there would be sin? If God does not create evil, does the existence of evil negate his omnipotence or omniscience?

Does the concept of evil spring from the mind of God?

This might deserve its own thread, but the question seems so intimately related to the original question I pose it here.

Philip Osborne

Philip:
Maybe I should rephrase this.

You claim that the spinner is pointing to .35. Now move the spinner an arbitrarily small amount. That movement can be as small as you want it to be. Now to get to it's new position, it has traversed an infinite number of points. So how can you say that the spinner was pointing to .35 and not one of the other infinite points that were traversed in that infinitesimal move? It doesn't matter how small you make the move, you always traverse an infinite number of points in that move.

The questions of whether or not the spinner could land, in principle, on 0.35 and whether or not we could tell whether or not it was on 0.35 are entirely seperate. You have provided interesting arguments concerning the latter, but they do not directly bear upon the former. From the fact that we can never tell what point the spinner was on if it actually existed, it does not follow at all that the spinner could not land on 0.35. I think you might be running the risk of committing what Frege called the fallacy of "psychologism," which occurs when truth is conflated with our perception of it.

Sincerely,

Philip

K

Philip:

Actually, what I think I've shown is that the idea of any kind of theoretical spinner landing on a precisely single point in an infinite neighborhood of other points is completely meaningless. It really has nothing to do with whether we can determine whether it is pointing to .35. It is theoretically impossible for it to land only on the point .35.

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: K ]</p>

Philip Osborne

Now move the spinner an arbitrarily small amount. That movement can be as small as you want it to be. Now to get to it's new position, it has traversed an infinite number of points. So how can you say that the spinner was pointing to .35 and not one of the other infinite points that were traversed in that infinitesimal move?

I can say that the spinner landed on 0.35 because that is where the spinner did in fact land. I still don't see how we get from "There are an infinite number of points between a and b" to "it is impossible for the spinner to land on just b." You say that it is impossible for the spinner to land on only 0.35, but my example postulated a spinner which is precise to a single point. Even if your argument is successful, the mechanics of the spinner are irrelevant. Suppose a computer were given the task of randomly generating a real number between 1 and 0; it could still choose a single number, even if there are an infinite number of values between it and any other number.

Even then, the argument is not focused on the spinner being able to land on a single point; I just used 0.35 as an example. Koons' example stated that the probability of the spinner landing on a rational number was 1/infinity, which is zero.

Sincerely,

Philip

Jerry Love

I hate comeing into a large topic late. I risk reiterating responses that have already been made and ignoring retorts by not reading throughly enough. Sorry for any such errors.

I think I can beat that.

Go is supposed to know the future, including all ofhisown actions (omniscience). Of God knows that he will do A in the future, he cannot possibly do B. God himself lacks the freewill to choose any path other than the one he has already seen.

This assumes a great deal. The biggest internal problem is that it assumes that there is only one possibly world where God does no evil. It could be an infinate number. Meaning the odds are infinity / infinity. It can't be reduced (1/1) because infinity isn't all that rational a number.

You also assume that odds are flat. If there are 4 outcomes, all four outcomes must be equally likely. There is a possible world where I die before finishing this sentance. It's not as likely a possible world as me not fying in that timeframe. The fact that I live from moment-to-moment does not require me to successfully navigate an infinate number of possible worlds where I died in one of the infinate amounts of moments that existed.

"Possible worlds" is an interesting abstraction, but I see little bearing to reality.

K

Philip:

The spinner can not land on .35 or any other single point. It lands on an infinite number of points. It makes no sense to say that it is infinitely precise. You claim that it has landed on .35. What is the minimum distance it would have to move to no longer point to .35? The fact is that there is no minimum distance to move it off of .35. Any movement, no matter how infinitesimally small, will cover an infinite number of points. You are still treating the spinner as if it can point to any of a finite number of infinitesimally small regions.

Your computer example also fails because an infinte number of decimal points would be needed to differentiate the numbers.

K

Jerry:

The actual assumption was that there were an infinite number of possible worlds where God does evil for every one in which he does none. Just like there are an infinite number of transcendental numbers for every non-transcendental number. However, both sets are still infinite.

I made this assumption based on the claimed free will of God. If He has FREE will, He is able to freely bring about any possible world.

Amen to that. It's misused constantly and it's often used incorrectly to hide an argument that doesn't work in the real world. If I never see modal logic used again, I wouldn't shed a tear.