"Dan Hook" <guldann@ix.netcom.com> On Mon, 10 Mar 1997 Wrote:
>it is one of my hobby's to argue with theists. I am aware that I do
>not have a chance of changing their views.
It's my hobby too, like you I know it's useless but it's more fun than stamp
collecting.
>If a being is omniscent then it knows the position and state of
>every particle in the universe. Of course, to get that kind of
>resolution, the being would need the entire universe as a storage
>device. Since adding any thought to this being would result in more
>information in the universe we are left with the problem of infinite
>simulations within simulations. This leads to paradox and a paradox
>is the conclusion of a negative proof.
I don't think that's the way to go, it's only a paradox if things are finite.
If the universe is infinite then God's mind could, as required, have an
infinite number of parts, so He could know exactly what was going to happen
in the Universe and He could also know exactly what He Himself was going to
do now and a billion years from now. In other words, although we have free
will God would not.
Suppose God was made up of an infinite number of the old Z80 computer chips
and, of course, a operating system so they could work together. You could
assign 10 chips to analyze and predict what one chip could do, if that didn't
do the job make it a thousand chips or a million, if that still wasn't enough
assign an infinite number of chips, remember the definition of an infinite
set is that you can make a one to one correspondence with a proper subset of
it. Strange things happen in the arithmetic of infinities, each chip without
exception could have an infinite number of chips packing an infinite amount
of computing power making predictions about what that one finite chip would
do, and you would still have an infinite number of chips to do other things,
like figuring out what would happen next in the universe.
I think a better strategy is to ask the theists if God is omnipotent, if they
say yes ask them if he can make a rock so heavy he can't lift it. Then ask
them if good and evil are independent of God. If they say yes then God has
nothing to with morality, except He is supposed to act that way, just like
everybody else. If they say no then the statement "God is good" is a vacuous
tautology.
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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