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08-04-2003, 12:43 PM | #21 | |
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08-04-2003, 02:54 PM | #22 |
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So why are we accepting God is omniscient?
Furthermore, how does knowing everything equate to being able to ascertain that what God says on a given subject is indeed objectively true? What kinds of thing would God know in order to decide that stealing is wrong? Sure God can see an increase in human unhappiness resulting from commanding man to go about thieving, but this then presumes that human happiness is objectively a sought after goal. Which is a utilitarian view. But how then does God know that human happiness is truely desirable? What knowledge counts towards this? What true propositions could be framed in order to make this an inevitable conclusion? How do we know that there can be such true propositions? What might they be constituted of? I would assume that God has decided that human happiness is desirable for him, but I would suggest that knowing all there is to know doesn't necessarily inform this view, because its a value judgement, and knowledge seems to relate to states of affairs that have, can or will happen. ------------ the incorrigible analytics' club |
08-04-2003, 06:01 PM | #23 | |
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08-04-2003, 06:04 PM | #24 | ||||
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08-05-2003, 03:56 AM | #25 | |
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Also, isn't omniscience being in the possession of all possible facts? I'm not sure how being in possession of all possible facts has the characteristic, inherently, of utilitarianism being the morally objective guiding principle. |
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08-05-2003, 09:18 AM | #26 | ||
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First off, if we are referring to the God of the Bible, it makes sense to use omnimax as a premise, since this is part of the nature of this god. So then, how can God make a decision if he is omniscient? For that matter, how can he make a decision if the notion of a 'decision' necessarily requires existence in time, and God is not bound to time? From here we get back to the meaningless statement "existing outside space-time." How can God exist if, to exist, one must first be present in both space and time? How can he be outside space if space is a prerequisite for outside? By human standards, God can't exist, just like by programming standards the programmer can't exist to his program. (In order for the program to recognize a thing as existing, it must first be a sequence of ones and zeros. The programmer is neither.) The crux is that human comprehension is inadequate to understand anything with more than three dimensions of space and one of time. Logically, the creator of these dimensions would also be outside of attainable knowledge. Like the programmer communicating with his program with ones and zeros, God could only communicate with the rules of the universe to those dependent upon those rules for perception. Analogously, no matter how hard the program tries, it cannot escape the truth that all things must be ones and zeros before they can exist and the programmer cannot be ones and zeros. The program can extrapolate the existence of its programmer, but his not-binary nature must always present a contradiction. While this sounds like a cop-out answer, I think it logically follows. Any other apology would not be reasonable. If God is indeed the creator of the very laws that we require for perception, then it is not rational to assume that he is bound by these laws. Sure there is no reason for us to assume that there is a God, but then again, a program has no reason to assume a programmer, (the laws of the program are "just there" as the brute fact of existence) and yet there always is one. |
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08-05-2003, 11:32 AM | #27 | |||
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08-08-2003, 09:08 AM | #28 | |
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Maybe this is the point where the analogy fails. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the analogous program exists in space time and so does the programer. Not so if the program itself only represents space time and the programmer represents God and is in some other state not bound by space or time. It is difficult not to attempt to apply the nature of the analogous programmer to God, but logically if we truly are "digital people," so to speak, we cannot do this. I still think the analogy can only rationally result in a "what if?" There could be a "programmer," but any speculation on who or what or how or why must fail by definition. Remember, using words dependent upon time and space to try to understand God are analogous to the digital people speculating on how many ones and zeros their programmer is made up of and in what sequence they occur. Any rational conclusion must result in the programmer's non-existence. "If the programmer is such and such binary code, who encoded him?" They cannot conceive of anything without first assuming ones and zeros, (a place the programmer cannot be) and we cannot conceive of anything without first assuming space and time (a place God cannot be, assuming he created it.) |
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