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

I see that you studiously avoid answering the question, az. It is a question about belief, not about God.

toxx

I take the view that God created space and time along with the universe - so they all had a beginning.



Agreed, but the ones we're aware of, at least, don't apply to the singularity; which is what I said and which is not quite the same thing.

toxx

There is no need to suppose that God was created. He is eternal, hence didn't have a beginning, hence didn't need to be created or caused. There has to be something like God to stop the vicious infinite regress of causation that we would otherwise have.

toxx

Hi, Andrew S.

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I have heard that, Fathom - that all times are present to God. When God created, time was one of the things created. It's difficult for us to understand, because we live in time as live in water, and take it for granted. My brother once used the analogy of the "wormhole aliens" in Star Trek DS9, and Q in 'the Next Generation" who keep saying to Bajorans and humsns, "oh, don't be so linear"

Andrew, I just read that Guide Entry, it's excellent, I admit I would have not read Aquinas myself, as he is quite dense, from what I have seen.

If I may stray from the topic a bit I would like to address a matter of spelling.

Et cetera is abbreviated ETC. and not ECT.

Okay, you all can go back to arguing.

Let me know who wins.

YB

fiction, why is he/she real

Della, I would agree with you that 'Aquinas' is 'quite dense' but I don't agree that the 'Guide Entry is excellent'( A2495199 ). I don't find the arguments are at all impressive.

Alji

Toxx

Not so much clutching at straws, more a case of throwing them to the four winds. I am arguing that it is impossible to know 'god' or whatever it was/is/will be that existed in the environment where the Big Bang has not happened, my 'proof' (As an additional one to having no capacity to percieve the referent object i.e. reality: only my perception of it) is that using logical premises, argument leads inevitably into infinite regression, the shape/dimensions/qualities of the 'object' under examination cannot even be guessed at with any certanty, let alone known.

The human component is then: whatever the 'object/non-object' that lies on the other side of the boundary that this inevitable infinite regression represents is: that any attempted description of it serves the views needs and wants of the person or persons describing it, and bares little relationship to the reality.

It is for this reason that I feel more benevolent towards concepts of multiple, potent(But not omnipotent) gods, as these are in a more realistic way 'knowable' whatever form they take as they lack the esential component which leads into infinite regression, i.e. Omnipotence.

Reducing Omnipotence to an equation becomes: Power * infinity = Omnipotence. but there is another equation too: ANYTHING (*/-+ dy/dx) INFINITY =INFINITY, it is this 'truth' which inevitably leads into infinite regression. once you attach the component of infinity to a 'god' that 'god' becomes unknowable. Mono theists then having created an unknowable god, seem to then expect all the followers of that religion to accept the descriptions and definitions of the 'object' defined and decreed by the heierachy of the church organisation, usually in the form of a text. E.g the Septaguint, the New Testament, The Quran, and alternate perspectives are then persecuted out of existance until all that remains is what the organisation has decided is true. I.e. this is the truth because we say it is.

So from my point of view although I concede there may be an infinite omnipotent force in the universe I don't think I nor anyone else is in a position to describe it: and such descriptions that are made serve only those individuals and organisations who seek the power that such a description will attribute to them.

The issue of power of course raises a whole new theme of debate.

It has already been successfully argued by Toxxin and others that god, omnipotent though he is, is restricted to operating within the rules of logic.

Logic dictates that some dimension of time is required, however non-linear, in any domain for action to take place in that domain, however non-material the action. It follows that either that dimension is either finite (i.e. had a starting point), infinite or cyclic.
An infinite time dimension demands that an infinite amount of time passed before the action took place; this is the reasoning that says that time in our universe had a beginning.
A cyclic time dimension is hard to grasp but has implications for the omnipotence of any being operating within that dimension.
This leaves exactly the same form of time we are familiar with and exactly the same questions of infinite regressions of X we have been discussing.

Toxxin's argument is that god is 'eternal'. 'Eternal' has no meaning without some concept of time; you might just as well use the term 'instantaneous'.

F

"'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."

"the difficulty with that idea is when you begin to receive information from your gods which you could not have constructed yourself, because it ties in too closely with information received by someone else about the same thing who is in tune with the same gods."

I would acknowledge that my position on this is complicated and I don't think I am managing to get it across as well as I would like so here's a few more bits to try and clarify the picture.

1) I cannot prove there is anything but what I percieve, but what I percieve makes no sense if there is not more than just myself and my perceptions in the universe: therefore there are others for me to relate to.

2) That said: I attribute a reality to the world of thought, which to my mind although it takes a different form to the physical objects I percieve, has no less reality than them. i.e. the thoughts in my mind are just as real as the chair I am sitting on, in fact prehaps more so.

3) My relationships with others is the medium through which thought passes from myself to another and from another to myself, the processes by which this happens are so subtle that I would be reluctant to say that I know them all or even that all of them could be known. But there is verbal communication including speech and paralanguage, non-verbal communication, including expression, position, body language, written texts, and other texts such as theatre/art/movies. Even if modern technological advances are removed there are still enourmous possibilities for the passage of thought between individuals, without recourse to the more debatable possibilities such as telepathy, (Not that I am dismissing these entirely just setting them aside on the grounds that they can be debated)

4) It occured to me some time ago in the light of the above that when thought is viewed as Real in the way I outlined above, then the possibility exists that thoughts in essence have a life of their own, and possibly even will. Although I present it as an hypothysis, I has also led me to wonder if this might be an explanation for a great many things. Although I dont think the model I outline requires thought to have will, consciousness or self awareness, I dont think it excludes it either.

In light of what I have described I find myself in an ambivalent possition, the 'empirical' part of my thinking holds to the idea that perceptions about ideas/thought and even gods can be shared because it is possible for those ideas/thought and gods to be independant of the individual minds that think them. Personaly I believe that this is an aspect of the 'collective' elements of Jung's theories, others being shared origins and shared experiences.

The sum of human thought over the millenias of human existance is not just contained in books it is contained in the passing of expereince of parent to child, between freinds and enemies, from artist to audience and as with any system the whole of this experience is probably greater than the sum of it's parts

SD. I've gone into detail earlier about how we can deduce the properties of God. It's rather like how we deduce the properties of the electron - but I won't repeat it all just yet.

As to a strict formulation of omnipotence, here is Swinburne's.

"9 Omnipotent
Richard Swinburne

A person P is omnipotent at a time t if and only if he is able to bring about any logically contingent state of affairs x after t, the descriptions of which does not entail that P did not bring x about at t. This is subject to the restriction that a person is no less omnipotent for being unable to bring about a state of affairs if he believes that he has overriding reason not to bring it about. So, God is omnipotent even if he is unable to do what he believes wrong. The paradox of the stone has false premises."

It's the abstract to be found here: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/philosophy/0198240708/acprof-0198240708-chapter-9.html

Or see the overall introduction here: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/philosophy/0198240708/toc.html

toxx

Unfortunately there are two incompatible concepts of 'eternal': 'timeless' and 'everlasting'. Neither has any meaning without some concept of time. Without time 'everlasting' and 'instantaneous' would be the same. 'Timeless', the way I prefer to use the term, just wouldn't be meaningful at all, and certainly would not be equivalent to 'instantaneous'.

NB. Swinburne prefers the 'everlasting' interpretation.

toxx

Oops! I disown the above comparisons with 'instantaneous'. I have fudged the distinction between the fact and the concept of time. The point about the two meanings of 'eternal' stands.

toxx

Toxx,

I understood your posting 20174, not least because it agrees with my earlier posting, but I am confused by your second post.

Could you please clarify the distinction you raised between the fact and the concept of time.

F

OK, Fathom. Without the fact of time, everything would be simultaneous. Everything would also be timeless. However, these terms would have meaning for us, assuming that we somehow existed and had the concept.

Whithout the concept of time, 'simultaneous' and 'eternal' in either of its senses would be meaningless. Nevertheless, states of affairs describable (for us who have the concept) in those terms could still obtain, although we wouldn't be able to contemplate them.

toxx

The entry is a reasonable exposition of Aquinas's arguments, Alji, which is all that's required for a reasonable guide entry. Whether the arguments *themselves* are impressive is a separate question entirely.

Noggin

Hello Toxx
I've been gazing at this most recent series of postings for a few minutes, and it has given me a headache!

I understand you to mean that you would delete the latter part of posting 20174, from the word 'without' onwards, and replace it with posting 20177. Is that roughly correct?
Or is posting 20177 just making the distinction between the fact and the concept?

Alji. I agree with Noggin. The entry 'qua' entry is fine. I also like the arguments, apart from the 'gradation' one. However, it seems to me that they are all based on the infinite regress that arises whenever we try to explain the origin of anything - that is, unless we get a circularity. In it's time, it would seem that the properties of things weren't seen to be related, as they are today.

toxx