Randy X

Jobar,

Thats possibile impossibility Perhaps he can cease to exist, but thats highly unlikely.

Regards

long winded fool

An interesting way of putting it. Can infinite power create more infinite power?

long winded fool

This sounds rational to me. This seems to lead to the free will/predestination paradox. If God is omnibenevolent, then he is predestined to only ever do the maximum good. Of course, we must then assume that Good exists independent of God's will, which wouldn't really be the case if He is the creator of the universe in which goodness exists. Maybe he has free will from his own perspective, (copping out on the conflict with omniscience by referencing the fact that he also creates all knowledge ) but all his choices manifest as absolutely good in his created universe and from the perspective of his created beings. I don't think this is too much of a stretch. To make a very loose analogy: When I'm writing a story, whatever I decide is right becomes right. While right and wrong do ultimately exist independently of me, they do not from inside the story. I decide what they are. Since Good and Evil are things which exist in the created universe, they can be entirely different "beyond" the creation, or they can be not present at all.

Philosoft

The problem I see is that all God's decisions don't obviously manifest as absolutely good. If God says, "no sex outside of marriage," I say, "screw you." But your model seems to imply that I should somehow recognize God's decree as "absolutely good" in spite of my own judgement that it is not good.
IMO, where the story analogy fails is that it doesn't presume free-willed beings. I think individuals who are free to judge God's actions muck up the "God as novelist" approach severely.

long winded fool

Not unless you feel you are in possession of absolute good. The judgements of good and bad are variable and subjective to the individual. If there is a type of good and bad that are independent of what the crazy guy down the street thinks, then this would indicate some value scale in which there can be a "greatest good." This could represent God. With beings of limited knowledge such as humans, I don't think there is any implication that they ought to recognize and label "the greatest good" as good. Because the crazy guy down the street can be objectively wrong about what is good, humans can be wrong about what is the greatest good. We can look back into history and judge our ancestors as being wrong in their interpretation of what is good, therefore we can be wrong in ours.

Yeah, it is a loose analogy, however as long as people believe their choices can affect the future, they can be said to have free will. We can postulate that all of our "decisions" have already been made by a higher power, however nobody can actually believe that and continue to function, so free will is a reasonable assumption, even if from a divine perspective it is an illusion. Though God may know for sure whether or not I'm going to poke myself in the eye in three seconds, I can't possibly know, therefore I have the freedom to either do it or not. Whatever my choice is will have been my inescapable prewritten destiny. (Convenient, I know, but since the future cannot be known by humans, but can by God, it works out this way.) This can be inserted in the novelist analogy. Jack doesn't know whether he is going to kick the ball, therefore when he does, it will be by his choice in the story. It will be by mine outside of the story. If we are in the story, "outside of the story" is meaningless. It is impossible for me to tell Jack what he is going to do in the future and then have him "change his mind" against my will. Either I must change my own mind, or I must lie to Jack about what he is going to do. (Both of these possibilities, of course, are not applicable to a being who can't actually "change his mind" or lie.)

Jobar

RTS, that's a very good first post! I am going to split it off to its own thread, although it fits fine under the 'god and logic' topic, I think your ideas deserve a new thread. Look for it under 'The cognitive content of God'. Jobar, moderator.

RTS

Thanks! Wow I'm honored. Thankfully, there are many of us (obviously you are included) able to still recognize reason, logically applied, without the poison restraints of childhood, toilet-trained religious brainwashing to view reality for what it really IS.

Link to this new thread:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=60252