h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

hello Andrew S,

<>

This is only a 'problem' if you believe in your particular belief. I was brought up RC and pretty much had a 'sort of' education with that.

Why do you need to believe in a creator? Why is this so important to you? An honest question. And since all beliefs are just that - requiring faith and such - how can you say (if indeed you do say so) that all other beliefs other than yours are wrong?


az

What's RC, az?

Well, I want to believe in a creator because it makes more sense than the Big Bang theory (at the moment).

'My brother says that gods are an outdated concept, that people created them to explain unexplainable phenomena such as weather and their very existence. I personally disagree, although I've never been able to put my disagreement into words.'

I would query whether things which are 'creations of the mind and society' lack a fundamentaly real existance. That something is of the mind does not, I believe, mean it is not real.

I exist because of my mind, and I am real.

I also think that it may not be unreasonable that such creations might have an awareness of their own, although I cannot prove it, and don't have much evidence to support it.
'Gods' may have been created by humans, I tend to think that its way more complicated than that, but even if we did that would not mean they were not then real. Just had a starting point.

Hi SD, and E&C:

I don't think the laws of logic can be broken. My response to such questions as can God make a four-sided triangle, would be that a four-sided triangle is not a thing. It is a nothing. And nothing is impossible to God...

Well, SD, I admit it's a word trick, but it's not just that. I think a weight so heavy that it cannot be lifted by someone who can lift all weights, would also count as a nothing.

Thanks for the Greek account, E&C.

hi E and C,

Sorry, RC is Roman Catholic. It was the religion I was brought up with. Which ended up putting me totally off any sort of religion.

To me religions are all social and political, they have little or nothing to do with any sort of god concept.

<>

Well, okay. Whatever you need. But does this have to take the form of subscribing to a religion? Or are you happy to have these beliefs within yourself?

az

Andrew S

I'm not sure the laws of logic can be broken either, but it raises an interesting conunndrum when discussing omnipotence.

Because

Logically,

For an omnipotent entity, even the logically impossible is possible: by definition.

Thanks Noggin! So if I say, 'I believe in a being that is self-referentially omniscient' that is equivalent to saying, 'I believe in God'... now there's a thought.

Here is my suggestion. It's interesting that (many centuries before Turing) St Thomas Aquinas wrestled with the question of God's omniscience, and concluded that His knowledge is not discursive and rational (so to speak) like our own - or, one might add now, algorithmic like a computer's - but immediate and intuitive.

If you want to express this in the language of Turing, I suppose we could say that God's knowledge is like one big axiom. I am thinking on my feet here, and I can see that this (if it makes sense) brings us to another problem, perhaps the deepest one of all, which is the interaction between God's knowledge and our freedom, which has been debated down the centuries.

As St Augustine of Hippo says, addressing God, 'you hold all things in the hand of your truth', which is a horribly clever phrase (as is usual with St Augustine) that expresses both God's omniscience and omnipotence.

Finally, the problem of incompleteness can also be applied in the other direction. It could be paraphrased in the form, no contingent thing contains within itself the reason for its being. Thus before 'that is', I think 'I am' (i.e. God is) is necessary.

Hi Azahar

The questions you've asked are difficult! I think I just do believe in a creator. Like you I'm RC. I do recall something you said earlier about happenstance, and I suppose I'm like the child who carries on asking 'why?' instead of stopping there. Mind you, I didn't entirely mean to start this particular theme.

I would have written something sympathetic to you before, but I didn't have anything sensible to say about bats. I hope they don't cause any more problems.

Thanks SD!
Hmmm... I'm not convinced... I admit it's a tricky area.

Hi Andrew S,

You suggest that your omnipotent god cannot break the laws of logic? Does this not apply limitations to 'omnipotence'? Reducing it to merely a qualified 'potence'?

The laws of physics are no more than the laws of logic applied to reality. The miracles were either simple conjuring tricks - illusions - or they broke the laws of physics. If the latter then they clearly broke the laws of logic too.

In order to believe in god you presumably have to have some concept of what that god is. Debating the nature of god is what takes up most of this thread and there are clearly many opinions on the subject. Some people (Toxxin for example) like to be able to fit their god into the known fabric of reality - to fit with the current thinking in cosmology and biology. Others deny the science and claim their god fits the scriptural account. Still more fall somewhere in between, rejecting the bits of science they don't like (or understand) and making their god fit with the rest. Nonetheless they have to rationalise the concept somehow because, unlike the queen in 'Alice', most of us can't believe impossible things; before or after breakfast.

A truly omnipotent god can be all things at all times; by bending the rules of logic he can be both the creator and not the creator, everywhere and nowhere, within the universe and beyond it, real and imaginary.

To you your omnipotent god is real, to me he's imaginary. If he's truly omnipotent then we are both right because he can be both things simultaneously. And that's not just subjectively right because it suits us but objectively so because it follows from the basic premise.

F

"A truly omnipotent god can be all things at all times; by bending the rules of logic he can be both the creator and not the creator, everywhere and nowhere, within the universe and beyond it, real and imaginary."

Theres something like this in the Sophia of Jesus Christ I think, at least it sounds very Gnostic.

SD

<

But as soon as the observations are made they become part of the system as a whole, which then becomes internally inconsistent.

Andrew S (and Fathom)

In physics the "bottom line" of existence is energy. But it makes no sense to ask what energy is "made of". It's an abstract conserved quantity. But given that energy can be neither created or destroyed it can be said to "exist in its own right." And this makes it as necessary as anything can be, given the existence of anything at all. And even the Ontological Argument contains that requirement as an unstated premise.

Noggin

Thanks F:

'The laws of physics are no more than the laws of logic applied to reality. The miracles were either simple conjuring tricks - illusions - or they broke the laws of physics. If the latter then they clearly broke the laws of logic too.'

I beg to disagree. There's a further degree of abstraction involved. My apologies for seeming a bit terse but I'm short of time...

Thanks Noggin: that *is* interesting.
Is energy part of the universe, though? I don't know: as a physcial property it seems to be less abstract than a number, for instance.

<>

No, it's the *whole* of the universe.

Or in Buddhist parlance "The Ground of all Being."

Noggin

hi Andrew,

<>

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I said I was brought up RC. I no longer belong to any religious organization.

I also live in Spain where I have had quite a bit of first-hand experience with Opus-Dei, since as you know, the founder of Opus was Spanish.

I do not like this organization - not even one little bit. Why? Because it seems like either brainwashing or - even worse - attempting to set up a 'superior society' within the society that already exists here.

And yes, I have read up on this cult. This form of Christianity that presumes far too many things for my liking.

<>

Being a member of Opus Dei you do nothing of the sort, and you know you don't. Please don't presume that because I have recently been chatting with my friends here about my bat problem (this is my second hootoo home after all) that I know nothing about your particular sect.

My question to you was an honest one - why do you persnally feel a need to believe in a creator? Many people don't and live quite happily. But you need this. I am wondering why. Is this too difficult a question for you to answer?

And I would suggest you think twice before you attempt to talk down to me in future.


az

btw

update!

They are everywhere. At least I've had the cats vaccinated against rabies now so I can rest easy when they fly into the livingroom.

Toxx, I can't be sure what sort of bat-thing is happening. I am going to call an ex-student who works in the national reserve park - she's a biologist - and ask her for some advice. It could be that there are people who will come and remove the bats since I did find out yesterday that they are, in fact, a protected species here.

I mean, I'm not about to plug up the entrance to their nest and kill the little things.

More phone calls have to be made at this point.

az

Hi Noggin. < This would seem to mean that God is not bound by any logic, and all explanation ceases.>

I have never said this, or that God is 'self-referentially' omniscient. I'm not sure what work the 'self-referentially' is supposed to do other than to point to some kind of paradoxical nature. For 'standard model' Theists, God is omniscient, simpliciter!

What logic does is to limit what we can think or ask of God. A simple analogy is that we can't ask for a number that is both odd and even, or prime and divisible by an integer greater than one. This is not a limitation of the number system, but of what it makes sense to enquire of it. Similarly with the paradox of the omnipotent being creating a stone that He can't lift. We're violating our own logic in asking the question.

toxx

SD.



Nah, it's not spurious, just a little difficult. Your point supports my argument! The only thing to stop the regress of X being preceded by W, then V etc, etc ad infinitum is to have a preceding cause that is eternal. Nothing was needed to cause *that* because it didn't have a beginning. Neither can anything have come before it.

toxx

Hello Az
My answer was also honest. And I didn't mean to speak down to you: sorry for doing that.

Why do I feel a need to believe in a creator? The question is at one step removed: I just do believe in a creator. I could try to analyse myself, perhaps... and yes I think it *is* a difficult question. Do you think it is easy?

The easier question is, *is* there a creator, and I hope I've put together some thoughts that make sense on this thread already. If you like I can try to summarise them again, but I'm not sure that's what you are asking.

Er, now you mention it, I hope the bat consultation goes well.